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THE LAST OF THE 
HERETICS 


BOOKS BY 
ALGERNON SIDNEY CRAPSEY 


RELIGION AND POLITICS 
THE RISE OF THE WORKING CLASS 
THE WAYS OF THE GODS 
INTERNATIONAL DEMOCRATIC REPUBLICANISM 
SARAH THORNE 


AND OTHER BOOKS 


AMR OF PRINZE. 


j 
ALGERNON SIDNEY CRAPSEY 


THE LAST OF THE 
HERETICS 


“We have piped unto you 
And ye have not danced; 
We have mourned unto you 
And ye have not lamented,”’ 





NEW yorRK ALFRED:A-+-KNOPF  McmxxIv 


COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY ALFREDA. KNOPF, ING. ° 

PUBLISHED, JUNE, 1924 ° SET UP, ELECTRO- 

TYPED AND PRINTED BY THE VAIL-BALLOU 

PRESS, INC., BINGHAMTON, N. Y.°* PAPER 

FURNISHED BY W. F. ETHERINGTON & CO., 

NEW YORK. ‘ BOUND BY H. WOLFF ESTATE, 
NEW YORK. ° 


MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


To 
WILLIAM ROSSITER SEWARD 
“My Father: My Father: 
The Chariot of Israel 
and the 


Horsemen thereof.”’ 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
In 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


httos://archive.org/details/lastofhereticsOOcrap 


PREFACTORY NOTE 


It has been my fortune to live in one of the greater ages 
of human history. In successive stages of my career I have 
been influenced by the master minds of Newman, Darwin 
and Karl Marx. Under the inspiration of Newman I be- 
came a Neo-Catholic and a High Church clergyman of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church. Under the guidance of 
Darwin I became an Evolutionist, a rationalist and a disciple 
of the Higher Criticism. In this process of growth I could 
no longer think within the confines of the literal interpreta- 
tion of the creeds of the Church of which I was a member 
and a minister. In my effort to interpret the creeds in the 
light of my increasing knowledge I came in conflict with the 
authorities of my Church, was accused, tried and con- 
demned as a heretic. I then renounced my ministry and 
exchanged the pulpit for the platform. 

Apart from this main issue of my career, I have had a 
varied and to me, most interesting history. My life has 
been a series of adventures. From my tenth year I have 
been master of myself. I was, in fact, heretical by nature. 

A heretic is one who thinks and gives voice to his own 
thought; chooses his own way; does not easily submit to 
authority. Such has been my estate. Spiritually and 
intellectually I have been constantly on the move. 

And yet both inwardly and outwardly my life has pos- 
sessed a unity far out of the common. From first to last 
I have been a Humanist. God has never troubled me. I 
have taken Him for granted. I studied and in a measure 
mastered the theology of my church; but it was never vital 
to me. It was the humanity of Jesus and not His divinity 


that won and held my allegiance. 
vii 


Vill PREFATORY NOTE 

It occurs to me that a life which has been so interesting 
to myself may, in some measure, interest my friends and 
neighbours, so I submit it to their reading. I know this to 
be arash proceeding. Self-revelation is always hazardous. 
But I take the risk because I want to be known to others 
even as I know myself. 

If this book does nothing else, it will manifest to the 
world the inconvenience of a creedal religion and the mani- 
fest absurdity, not to say the immorality, of vows of any 
kind and of priestly vows in particular. When a young 
man comes to the entrance of the ministry of the Church, 
he finds written over its portals the words, ‘‘Leave thought 
behind all ye who enter here.” 

During the formative period of Christian history, from 
the first to the fourth century, there was no fixed 
creed, such as the Church has to-day; the conditions of 
church membership were moral, social, and economic, rather 
than intellectual; they were the warm impulses of the heart, 
rather than the cold concepts of the intellect. 

There were, to be sure, certain beliefs which were the 
common possession of all Christians—such as the divine 
sonship of Jesus; His death, resurrection and ascension; 
His second coming and the establishment of His Kingdom 
in the earth. But this was an emotional rather than an in- 
tellectual belief; it found its expression in life; when men 
gave themselves up to the hope and expectation of the 
speedy second coming of Christ they no longer had any 
interest in this present world; they who had lands and pos- 
sessions, sold them and laid the price at the apostle’s feet; 
nor said any man that aught of the things which he possessed 
was his own for they had all things in common, The 
main elements of association in this communistic Church 
were social and economic. The Church was not a State; 
it was a brotherhood; it was a family; it was the Household 


of God. 


PREFATORY NOTE 1X 


It was not until the fourth century that the intellectual 
and political forces dominated the Church. The struggle 
between Arius and Athanasius was in reality a struggle be- 
tween the Household of God, in which all things were in 
common, and the Imperial State with its supremacy of 
private property. 

In this contest the Imperial State prevailed—Athanasius 
and his party sold out to the Emperor; the Church lost her 
liberties and came under the dominance of the imperial and 
priestly powers. 

If there is any significance in my life it is that from the 
days of my youth I have been, without knowing it, a disciple 
of Arius, rather than of Athanasius. If anyone will be at 
the trouble to read my book, ‘‘Religion and Politics,’ which 
contains the lecture which brought about my trial and con- 
demnation, such an one will see that I was condemned 
primarily not for theological, but for social, political, and 
economic heresy. 

This, I think, will also be evident in the general story of 
my life which I herewith submit to the judgment of the 
reader. 





CONTENTS 


BIRTH AND LINEAGE 
HOME LIFE 

THE UNJUST PUNISHMENT 
THE GREY WITCH 

THE GREY MAN 

MY DISGRACE AT SCHOOL 
NECESSITY CALLS TO WORK 
WAR’S ALARMS 

I WALK IN HIGH PLACES 
WHITES AND BLACKS 

DEAD LETTERS 

THE TRAIL OF DESTINY 
THE CALL TO PREACH 
COLLEGE LIFE 

THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY 
A DEACON OF SORTS 

PRIEST OFFICIATING 

JUNIOR ASSISTANT MINISTER 
A LODGING-HOUSE 

MY DREAM COMES TRUE 
BEGINNINGS ARE HARD 

THE PREACHER 

THE PASTOR 


THE PRIEST 


103 
109 
116 
122 
128 
132 
137 
143 


X11 
XXV 
XXVI 
XXVII 
XXVIII 
XXIX 
XXX 
XXXI 
XXXII 
XX XIII 
XXXIV 
XXXV 
XXXVI 
XXXVIT 
XXXVIITI 
XXXIX 
XL 
XLI 
XLII 
XLIII 
XLIV 
XLV 
XLVI 
XLVII 
XLVIII 
XLIX 
L 


LI 


CONTENTS 
THE CONGREGATION 
OUR INSTITUTIONS 
RETREATS AND QUIET DAYS 
A MISSIONER 
DANGEROUS READING 
ILLUSION 
DISILLUSION 
A REVULSION OF FEELING 
A STARTLING DISCOVERY 
THE RATIONALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
THE RITUALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
THE SOCIALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
A DECADENT CHRISTENDOM 
A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCHES 
SPIRITUAL SOIL AND SUNLIGHT 
TIME PASSES 
THE PHILIPPINE EPISCOPATE 
AN EMPTY CHURCH 
THE AMERICAN CHURCH-STATE 
A WORD THAT WENT ROUND THE WORLD 
NO CAUSE FOR ACTION 
GUILTY AS CHARGED 
THE CHURCH SHUTS THE DOOR 
RENUNCIATION 
ABIIT AD PLURES 
THE BISHOP ERRS 


THE DIVINITY OF A TELEGRAPH POLE 


147 
150 
158 
164 
177 
182 
186 
I9I 
195 
201 
205 
208 
212 
217 
226 
232 
236 
239 
244 
249 
254 
260 
269 
275 
284 
287 
291 


THE LAST OF THE 
HERETICS 


une 
‘ ve F 


rae 
' ‘i 
Vaak eeaet 





CHAPTER I 
BIRTH AND LINEAGE 


WAS born on the 28th day of June, 1847, in the town 
| of Fairmount, County of Hamilton, State of Ohio. 
My father was of Teutonic origin. I can trace my an- 
cestry in the male line as far back as my great-grandfather. 
Just after the Revolutionary War two brothers, Ulric 
Jan and Jan Ulric Kropps, were living in the town of 
Schodack, in the County of Columbia, in the State of New 
York; they were tenants of the Patroon Van Rensellaer 
and followed the honest trade of the blacksmith. They 
came from their native land to the new world some time 
during the Revolutionary War. My surmise is that they 
were members of that mercenary army hired by George 
III of England to subdue his revolting subjects in the 
American Colonies, and, finding this land to their liking, 
made it their home. 

One of these men, whether Ulric Jan or Jan Ulric, I 
cannot tell, took to wife a Welsh woman, Ann Griffith by 
name, and begat sons and daughters. One of these sons, 
called Jan, or as it is in English, John, moved westward 
to the town of Parma, in Genesee County, State of New 
York, where he engaged in farming, being at the same 
time the minister of a small Baptist Church. In due time 
John Crapsey (for so now was the name spelled) married 
a wife—name and lineage unknown—and begat sons and 
daughters. To the youngest of these sons he gave the 
name of Jacob Tompkins—Jacob in honour of the great 


Patriarch, and Tompkins in honour of the then Governor of 
I 


2 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


New York, a Democrat of power in his day. By reason 
of his birth my father was a Calvinistic Baptist in religion 
—in politics a Democrat. 

My mother was Rachel Morris, the daughter of Thomas 
Morris, of the town of Bethel, Clermont County, Ohio, a 
leading citizen not only of his State of residence, but of the 
United States of America. He was, at the time of my 
father’s courtship, representing his state in the Senate of 
the United States. Thomas Morris was not a politician, 
not even a statesman in the popular sense; he was a seer 
and a prophet, a hero and a martyr. A man of signal 
ability, he was self-educated and the maker of his own for- 
tune. While yet a lad, to escape the miasmatic atmosphere 
of slavery he migrated, alone, from his native State of Vir- 
ginia, to the wilderness north of the Ohio River. Morris 
chose this region for his home, because by act of the Con- 
tinental Congress, confirmed by the United States, the soil 
of this land was made for ever sacred to free labour. 
With all the courage of a pioneer this boy built his cabin 
on the banks of a small running stream in the depths of 
the forest; living by his own labour off the land and, after 
his day’s work was done, enlarging his mind by reading 
history and law by the light of his hickory fire. 

When the territory of Ohio was ready for the larger 
life of Statehood, Thomas Morris was also ready for polit- 
ical service. He was a member of the Constitutional Con- 
vention and of the early legislatures of the State, and after 
this a Justice of the Supreme Court of Ohio. In 1830 he 
was chosen to represent his State in the United States Sen- 
ate. Gifted as a jury lawyer, he was successful at the bar 
and had accumulated quite a property. 

My Grandfather Morris was pure Kelt. Driven by re- 
ligious persecutions, certain Welsh families of the clans 
Morris and Griffiths left Wales and made new homes for 
themselves in the mountain regions of Virginia. These 


BIRTH AND LINEAGE 3 


families by intermarriage kept the race pure. My grand- 
father had all the characteristics of his race. He was small 
of stature and frame, intense in feeling, alert in action, 
highly emotional and deeply religious; he was easily moved 
to anger, and, in the outbreaks of his passion, given to vio- 
lence. The whole life of Thomas Morris was mastered by 
a deep-seated, passionate hatred of human slavery as prac- 
tised in his native State of Virginia. To escape it he exiled 
himself into the wilderness; to fight it he forfeited his polit- 
ical career. 

This tragedy came upon him just as my father married 
into the family. The political exile, the social ostracism, 
the religious excommunication of my grandfather was the 
consequence of a speech made by him in the Senate in the 
session of 1836. This speech was made in answer to one 
of Henry Clay in which that Senator advocated one of his 
many compromises between freedom and slavery. Morris 
attacked the whole scheme of Clay, root and branch; he 
would permit no compromise with slavery; he not only de- 
fended the right of petition against it; he not only called 
for its abolition in the District of Columbia, he denounced 
the whole institution as a foul thing, cruel to the blacks, 
degrading to the whites, a violation of human rights; a 
contradiction of the fundamental principles of the Ameri- 
can Republic, and repugnant to the Word and will of God. 
This speech had in it the sublimity of a biblical prophecy— 
it laid bare the hideous social ulcer and called down upon 
the sins of the nation the wrath of God. Occupying the 
attention of the Senate for the better part of two days, 
this speech closed with these fateful words: ‘‘The Negro 
shall yet be free!” 

For this speech the Southern Senators called for the ex- 
pulsion of Morris from the Senate; he was read out of 
the Democratic Party, excommunicated by the Methodist 
‘Church, and hunted through his State as though he were a 


4 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


mad dog. He joined the Liberty Party, and spent the 
rest of his life in anti-slavery agitation. He was a candi- 
date of his party for Vice-President. He died in his sixty- 
ninth year of a stroke of apoplexy, with the words “Lord 
have mercy on my soul” on his lips. He was denied Chris- 
tian burial. The memory of this moral hero survives in a 
single paragraph in the National Biography, and in a “Life 
of Thomas Morris’—of incomparable dullness—written 
by one of his sons, a Presbyterian clergyman. 

My mother was her father’s daughter, a pure Kelt, low 
of stature, small of frame, tireless in action; extreme in her 
moods. Now dancing and singing on the terrace like a 
happy child; now, in deepest despair, wandering alone in 
the woods like a lost soul. It was the irony of love that 
married this passionate, practical woman to her calm, 
philosophic, impractical husband. My mother hated my 
father’s name, Jacob. When speaking of or to him she 
called him Mr. Crapsey, and he called her Mrs. Crapsey! 
Under such circumstances, this union could not be a happy 
one, and yet it was not altogether unhappy. In a wistful 
way my father tried to meet the practical demands and 
humour the varying moods of my mother, and in an equally 
wistful way my mother admired the sterling honesty and 
intellectual supremacy of my father. 


CHAPTER II 


HOME LIFE 


larger measure than at present, was the economic 

unit. ‘It did not, as in the days of old, provide its 
own raw material, and the spinning-wheel was rather more 
for ornament than for use; but in spite of these changes the 
family was still an industrial establishment. It did its 
own baking; it manufactured the clothing for the women 
and the children; it made its own soap and did its own 
laundering; it canned and preserved its own fruits and 
vegetables and smoked its own meats; except in the cities, 
each family raised its own cattle, swine and fowls. 

A family so organized could afford numerous children, 
because after the fifth year each child was an asset. ‘The 
boy of six or seven could feed the chickens, weed the gar- 
den, gather the fruits and vegetables, and drive the cows to 
pasture. In those good old days a woman’s place was in 
the home; there she found full occupation for her organiz- 
ing power, and all the muscular exercise that she needed 
for her full development. In our home the wife and 
mother was the head of the industrial establishment. She, 
with the assistance of her children, not only directed, but 
performed, the labour of the house. Her working-hours 
were from six o'clock in the morning to nine o'clock at 
night. It was the variety of the work that made this life 
of ‘constant occupation endurable. To the older children 
were assigned the duties of the care of the younger ones, 
and assisting, as far as they were able, in the household 

5 


if the mid-nineteenth century the home, in a much 


6 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


tasks. Our father left immediately after breakfast, for 
his office in the city, and returned at nightfall to busy him- 
self with the cattle. He did not meddle with the manage- 
ment of the house or the discipline of the children. In 
fact, until I was eight or nine years old I seldom saw my 
father; at breakfast or at supper I caught a glimpse of him; 
we younger children looked on him, not as a member of the 
household, but as company. He was never familiar with 
his children; from the first he treated us as his equals. If 
he were to meet me on the road he would say, “Well, sir, 
where are you going?’ When he called me in the morn- 
ing it was always by my full name; to others I might be 
“Al,” or ‘Allie’; to my father I was always Algernon. I 
can hear him now, as if it were yesterday, calling up the 
stairs, ‘“‘Algernon, Algernon; it is time to get up’—and 
he never called but once. But if I presumed upon his good 
nature and snuggled down to sleep again, I heard a treble 
voice, quick, decided, crying, “Allie! Allie! Get up this 
minute’—-and I got up, for this voice meant business. It 
was my father’s calling me in the early morning light that 
first put me in awe of my name; it was such a big name 
for such a little boy! It came to me because of my eldest 
brother’s admiration for Algernon Sidney, the lieutenant 
of Cromwell. ‘[o my mother I was nothing but the baby 
boy to be petted and whipped as occasion required. 

In those days we lived in a sort of rude luxury. We had 
abundance of food, in which no thought of calories entered. 
Toothsome ignorance ruled in the kitchen and served at 
the table. Our breakfast consisted of fried meats, beef 
or pork, fried potatoes and buckwheat cakes; our dinner of 
boiled or roast meats, vegetables and pie; our supper of 
chicken or eggs, fruit and cake. My mother made wonder- 
ful pies and cakes and she never denied us a second piece. 
I look back on those gargantuan feasts with astonishment 
and terror. That my digestive organs were unequal to 


HOME LIFE 7 


the task laid upon them is not surprising; the wonder is that 
they did not fail altogether. To this mode of nourishment 
I owe the biliousness, the dyspepsia and the low spirits of 
my early life. 

In a large family the children always run in pairs. My 
older brothers and sisters were my tyrannical enemies, 
against whom my brother Thomas and I formed an al- 
liance, offensive and defensive. He, the next older than lI, 
stood between me and the buffetings of the grown-up world. 
On every occasion we paired, and were always mentioned 
together as Tommie and Allie. When I went into the 
army Thomas followed; soon after I left home Thomas 
died. I do not remember ever quarrelling with him; with 
others I could kick and scratch; never with Thomas! 

Our house was so arranged that the night was the time 
of adventure. When we went to bed we never knew what 
would happen before morning. ‘The flat roof over our 
heads was so related to the hill behind the house that it 
was possible for any man or beast to step from the hill to 
the housetop. As we lay in bed we could hear cats and 
coons scurrying over our heads; these we soon learned to 
endure, but when the cattle came down we had to go out in 
our night-shirts and drive them off. ‘Then we would call 
our dog, Rollo, to keep guard on the roof while we slept. 

This early home life remains with me as a medley of 
crying, crawling babies, laughing, weeping boys and girls. 
I was carried along in this family life as in a boat. I re- 
member it only as one remembers passing scenery: the de- 
tails are forgotten, only the general impression remains. 
I can recall only a few distinct incidents, such as an unjust 
punishment, the grey witch, the grey man, disgrace at 
school, my walks with my father, and the like. 


CHAPTER III 


THE UNJUST PUNISHMENT 


HERE is no event in human history more interesting 
and exciting than the settlement of the Ohio 
Valley in the third and fourth decades of the nine- 
teenth century. What was in eighteen-twenty an almost 
unbroken wilderness became in eighteen-fifty the site of 
thriving villages and populous cities. The richness of the 
soil, the abundance and value of the timber, the unfailing 
water power furnished by brooks, creeks and rivers, at- 
tracted settlers from various parts of the world, especially 
from Virginia and the Eastern States, from Ireland and 
Germany. 

In eighteen-twenty Cincinnati was a military post on the 
banks of the Ohio, protecting a few hundred settlers; in 
eighteen-fifty it was a thriving city of three hundred thou- 
sand people, a centre of trade, especially with the South; 
with churches, schools, and colleges; renowned for its 
scientific, artistic and musical institutions. This distinc- 
tion it owed in a large measure to the German element of 
its population. Men of culture came to this new country 
to enjoy its intellectual freedom; peasants by the thousands 
were attracted by the freedom of the land, and artisans by 
the scarcity of labourers. One large section, separated 
from the rest of the city by a canal, was known as “over 
the Rhine’’; only the German language was common to that 
section of the city. 

The movement of population from East to West was as 


constant as the flowing of the Ohio River. Our house was 
8 


THE UNJUST PUNISHMENT 9 


situated on the Harrison Turnpike about five miles west of 
Cincinnati, and was a landmark to the emigrants making 
their way to the Golden West. Standing on its terraced 
hill-side surrounded by its orchards of peach and _ pear- 
trees and its grove of locusts, with roses blooming in its 
dooryard, it was to the emigrant his first view of the 
promised land. 

Lawyer Crapsey’s house was the site of a famous 
spring of water. ‘his spring came out from under the 
limestone rock, a steady stream of clear, cold water; the 
spring proper was covered by a spring house, in which was 
housed the milk, the butter, the eggs and perishable fruit 
of the household; outside the spring house on the roadside 
was a great trough for the watering of horses and cattle, 
and drinking-cups for men, women and children. 

The children of the Crapsey family found unending de- 
light, sitting on the roof of the spring house, watching the 
wagons go by. They were long wagons, covered with 
canvas, drawn by teams of horses or oxen. ‘The emigrants 
lived in the wagons; they carried their cooking-utensils 
hanging from the wagonsides; in fair weather they ate and 
slept on the wayside; in foul weather they huddled under 
their canvas covering. ‘The children laughed and played 
beside their moving homes; the mothers nursed their babes 
under the open sky, and so they went on and on, an unend- 
ing procession of wagons carrying an old people going to 
an old land, that out of these two oldnesses there might 
come forth a new people and a new land, people and land 
combining to create a new era for the human race. 

All flowing streams deposit a sediment and it was so with 
this moving stream of humanity: A mile or so to the 
westward of our home was such a deposit. It was com- 
posed of poor whites from Virginia; of feeble Germans and 
drunken Irish. The centre of this settlement was the 
saloon; not a reputable beer saloon, but a ginshop of the 


IO THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


lowest order, the scene of drunken orgies and sexual im- 
moralities. This vicious deposit lay between our house 
and a village half a mile beyond in which was the grocery 
that furnished us with our daily supplies. To this grocery 
I was sent as occasion required; this errand was to Thomas 
and myself a dread and a danger. As we walked along 
the road there would rush out at us from this ginshop a 
burly boy, larger than we (I say ‘“‘we,”’ but we were seldom 
together, so I will change the narrative to ‘I,’ ‘“‘myself,” 
as the victim of the drama); and throw me down, kick and 
cuff me and rub my face in the dust. When I came crying 
to my home without supplies I was sent back again, and my 
older brothers said, ‘Why don’t you boys lick the brute ?”’ 
and this we determined to do. Thomas and I laid out a 
plan of action for the defeat of our enemy worthy of Cesar 
himself. We prepared an ambush. Thomas ran along 
the hill-side and hid himself in the bushes opposite the 
home of our enemy. I took my basket and went up the 
road as though I were going to the grocery, and I whistled 
by the way. The sight of me and the sound of my whistle 
was, to our foe, as a red rag to a bull: he came rushing at 
me, yelling like a wild Indian; he knocked me down, began 
mauling me and rubbing my face in the dust. While busy 
with me the bully did not see Thomas shooting down the 
hill-side, as a ball from a cannon. When he was struck by 
this human missile, he went bowling over and over in the 
dust of the roadway. I jumped up and joined Thomas, 
who was sitting on our fallen foe, giving him a taste of his 
own medicine. We walloped him with our fists; we rubbed 
his face into the grit of the roadway; we kicked him 
and cuffed him and sent him bleeding and yelling to the 
shelter of the saloon, while we ran up into the woods and 
scurried home, inflated with the joy of victory. But our 
joy was shortlived. 

While Thomas and I were washing away the evidences 


THE UNJUST PUNISHMENT II 


of our conflict, the father of our defeated foe came raging 
into our yard and told our mother that we had nearly killed 
his boy and he was going to have the law on us. Our ac- 
cuser so frightened our poor mother that, without waiting 
to hear our side of the case, she dragged us, her own boys, 
into the woodshed and gave us the whipping of our lives, 
leaving our bodies burning with the stripings of her whip 
and our souls burning with a sense of injustice. 

When our brothers came home in the evening and our 
mother learned the truth in the case her heart was broken 
with sorrow and remorse. She put us to bed, sponged our 
burning bodies with cool water, rubbed them with soothing- 
oil and, with tears streaming down her cheeks, begged our 
pardon. 

Our elder brothers went down to the home of the 
father of our enemy and so frightened him with threats 
of the law that he took his woman, his boy and his brood 
of children, his meagre household stuff, and trekked away 
to the westward and the victory remained with Thomas 
and myself. Our dear mother never forgave herself this 
act of injustice. Years afterward, when visiting me in 
New York, she recalled this event and once more asked 
my pardon. I said, ‘‘Never mind, Mother dear; if I got 
one whipping which I did not deserve I am sure I escaped 
a hundred which I did deserve’; and my mother said, 
smiling through her tears, ‘I guess that’s so, my son.” 
So we kissed and agreed to forget. 


CHAPTER IV 


THE GREY WITCH 


s late as the eighteen-fifties the wraiths of Indian 
A braves still haunted the forests of the Ohio region. 


Weird stories were told to little boys when they 
were naughty, of the great chief, Wanamaka, whose ghost 
glided in and out among the trees, seizing upon little boys 
who had offended their fathers, their mothers, their elder 
brothers and their sisters and, above all, their teachers, 
changing these little boys into Indians and carrying them 
away into the Far West to fight the battles of the red man. 
When I had reached the ripe age of seven years I began 
to discount these stories as the invention of grown-ups to 
frighten little boys into an irrational obedience, and such 
an obedience was then and always has been abhorrent to 
my conscience. 

In spite of these ghostly tales, or rather because of them, 
these forests were my daily attraction; when I could I 
would slip away from the open spaces of civilization and 
wander hour after hour in their Druidic shades, hoping 
against hope that Wanamaka would come and change me 
into an Indian brave and carry me away to the Far West 
to fight the battles of the red man, that so I might escape 
the tyranny of grown-ups and the weariness of school. In 
vain my mother whipped me; my father warned and my 
teachers kept me in; the ghost of Wanamaka still lured me 
to my fate. 

Sometimes my brother Thomas was my fellow wanderer, 
and our errancy once brought us to the edge of destruction. 
But for this evil Wanamaka was not to blame. Our igno- 


rance was our enemy. ‘Though there be no wraiths of 
12 


THE GREY WITCH 13 


Indian braves haunting its shades, yet the forest is a treach- 
erous place; poisonous snakes glide through its grasses and 
poisonous berries grow on its bushes; it was the berries 
that were nearly the death of us. We saw them hanging 
in tempting clusters and we plucked them and did eat, and 
by and by, feeling griping pains, we hurried home and a 
frightened mother sent in haste for the doctor, who gave 
us emetics and so saved our souls alive. My mother’s in- 
terpretation of this mishap was that we should keep out-of 
the woods; my interpretation was that we should not 
eat berries. But alas for the valour of youth! what 
an Indian chief could not do was easily accomplished 
by a harmless old woman. One evening, just as the sun 
was going down, my mother called me and said, “Allie, 
run up to Mrs. Gunther and ask her to come down to- 
morrow and help me with the washing.”’ I went upon this 
errand with a glad heart, for of all the hours of the day in 
the woods this was to me the magic hour; the deepening shad- 
ows, the falling winds, the twittering of the birds in their 
nests, the passing of the glory of the day into the mystery 
of the night combined to make this hour sacred to my soul. 

Mrs. Gunther lived up on the hill-side, in the thick of 
the forest, about a mile from our house. As I lingered 
along my way I heard the trees and the underbrush rus- 
tling with life, as bird and beast hurried to nest and hole. 
Far down below, the monastery bell was ringing vespers, 
and the whistles of the factories were releasing the worker 
from his toil. Everywhere was peace, and God was giving 
His beloved sleep. 

As I approached the home of Mrs. Gunther I was as- 
sailed by the sickening smell of rotting apples. As I drew 
near the Gunther house this smell was overpowering; it 
was then quite dark. ‘The Gunther house, built as it was 
in the side hill, had its cellar even with the ground; the 
cellar door was open and it was from this cellar that this 


14 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


smell of rotting apples came out. When I came to this 
open door, there rose up from the midst of the decaying 
fruit a gaunt, grey creature, which for all the world was 
just like the scarecrow in our cornfield. This horrid witch, 
for so it seemed to my frightened soul, came toward me, 
its hands dripping with rotten apple juice; its scant dress 
flapping about its bare legs; its grey hair hanging in wild 
disorder over its eyes; its voice screeching an outlandish 
gibberish, frightening my soul out of my body, so that I 
turned and ran down the hill for dear life. I did not 
stop running until I came up against our fence. I seized 
hold of the fence and vomited the contents of my stomach, 
down to the bitter bile, out upon the ground and fell down 
into a dead faint. I lay unconscious for some time, until 
the growing coolness of the night brought me to myself. 
I rose up, crept under the fence and made my way to our 
house. When I came in my mother began to scold me for 
being gone so long. At this I broke out into wild hyster- 
ical crying. I cried and cried until my frightened mother 
took me in her arms and carried me to bed. When I could 
speak I told her how the scarecrow from our cornfield had 
followed me up the hill and had hidden in Mrs. Gunther’s 
cellar and had tried to catch me and carry me away. My 
mother took me in her arms and soothed me, telling me 
that it was not the scarecrow that had frightened me; it 
was only Grandma Gunther. 

Be that as it may, for many years thereafter Grandma 
Gunther, in the guise of a grey witch, would come to my 
bed, when I was in my early sleep, sit upon my stomach 
and drop the juice of rotting apples in my eyes. At this 
I would awaken with a scream and it would take a long 
time to soothe me to sleep again. This grey witch robbed 
me of at least three inches of my growth and sent me 
forth upon my life’s journey with shattered nerves. I did 
not get rid of her until I left my home in Cincinnati. 


CHAPTER V 


THE GREY MAN 


HE emigrants who came from the old world to the 
new brought with them their several religions. So 
it came to pass that in the city of Cincinnati, rigid 
puritanism existed side by side with devout Catholicism. 
The Irish and the Germans made of my native land a Cath- 
olic stronghold. The whole of the region known as “‘over 
the Rhine” was given up to this form of religion. Catholic 
churches and institutions sprang up on every side. Catholic 
priests in their cassocks, Sisters of Mercy in their habits, 
were as familiar to my youth as the emigrant wagon and 
the wandering pedlar. Convents and monasteries followed 
in the wake of the churches. The influence of the Catholic 
element was powerful in the political, social, industrial and 
business life of the community. It was the Irish Catholic 
labourer with his pick and shovel who made our roads, 
dug our cellars and carried in his hod the bricks and the 
mortar that built our houses. 

The German Catholics cleared our lands, cultivated our 
gardens, planted our vineyards and our orchards, raised for 
us our cattle and our pigs, and in the course of twenty-five 
years made Cincinnati the Queen City of the West. It 
was the German element, largely Catholic, that gave to us 
our system of free schools and made our city an intellectual 
and artistic centre; so that for a time Cincinnati was for 
the West what Boston was to the East: the home of the 
thinker and the scholar. Inthe month of November, 1843, 


there was laid in Cincinnati, largely because of the German 
15 


16 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


element, Catholic and Protestant, the foundation of the 
first astronomical observatory ever erected in America. 
This occasion was made for ever famous by the oration of 
John Quincy Adams, pronounced after an exhausting jour- 
ney from Boston, at the risk of his life. 

A lad could not grow up in such an atmosphere as this 
without breathing it in with his own breath. When I left 
my native city I carried away from it a deep feeling for 
natural beauty, a reverence for devout religion in any form, 
and a veneration for sound learning, natural science and 
sincere art. 

It was part of the benefit of my environment that I came 
to my manhood without serious religious prejudice. Arch- 
bishop Purcell, who presided over the Catholic Church, was 
venerated as a good man and a useful citizen by men and 
women of all religions and of no religion. When financial 
disaster came upon him he was rescued by the common 
charity of the whole people, without regard to religious 
differences. 

But far beyond this I learned to love the Catholic Church 
because of its appeal to my sense of beauty and my sense 
of mystery. The call of the monastery bell to prayers 
from matins to compline reminded one every hour of the 
life beyond life. The friars reading their offices as they 
walked between the graves of their dead filled the soul 
with a reverence for holy men and holy things that was 
never lost. I am sure I owed my own future calling to 
the ministry of the church to the impressions made upon 
my soul by these devout friars. 

One day as I was lingering by the monastic gate, one 
of the friars laid his hand upon my head and blessed me, 
and I came away weeping with an unknown joy. 

For a long time after this, if I were walking alone in 
the woods, I would see a grey man walking before me. I 
would follow him, but could never come up to him; when 


THE GREY MAN Vi 


I would come near to him he would fade away into the 
greyness of the earth and the sky, and it was pressed in 
upon my soul that I should be as that grey man—a minis- 
ter of the most high God and a servant of the people; 
and so it came to pass. The grey witch was my bane 
by night; the grey man was my blessing by day. 


CHAPTER VI 


MY DISGRACE AT SCHOOL 


, " J HEN I was about six years old I suffered what 
seemed to me a shameful wrong. I was seized 
by violent hands and, in spite of screams and 
kickings, I was dragged away to what was to me a prison 
house and a torture chamber. I was sent to school, liter- 
ally sent. No healthy child of six ever went to school of 
his own accord; he had to be dragged or driven there. 
And the instincts of the rebellious boy were sane and 
sound; he had no call to be in a school, at least in such 
a school as was provided for him in the mid-nineteenth 
century. In these schools a mere child, a baby, was com- 
pelled to sit still on a hard bench hour after hour and 
listen to weary children under the rod of exasperated 
teachers, droning their a, b, c; spelling c-a-t, cat; d-o-g, 
dog, and if a little boy or girl failed to spell aright, 
his or her little hands were blistered with the rod. 
From the very first day of my incarceration in this place 
of torment, I was in rebellion against it. Instead of being 
a good boy and attending to my letters, I was for ever 
gazing through the open door and the open window out 
into that world of freedom and beauty from which I had 
been snatched away. Instead of watching those ugly 
things called letters and the pages of my book, I was gazing 
at the dragon clouds floating through the sky, and listening 
to the drone of dragon-flies floating above the flowers. 
The outer region of the sky and the earth was so lovely 


and so interesting, the inner region of the school so ugly 
18 


MY DISGRACE AT SCHOOL 19 


and forlorn, that I adored the one and despised the other. 
As a consequence, I was a trial to my teacher and a sor- 
row to my mother. It seemed to me that my mother and 
my teacher were in a conspiracy to compel me to learn my 
letters. I set my will against their will. I flatly refused 
to learn my letters. I was whipped in school and I was 
whipped at home because I would not learn my letters. 

I remember, as if it were yesterday, how my teacher, 
who was my Cousin Sidney, took me into a dark closet 
of the school, in which the girls hung their hats and cloaks 
—how I hate to this day the smell of girls’ hats and cloaks! 
—and there, after whipping me until my body was stinging 
with the striping of the whip and my soul aflame with 
anger, my Cousin Sidney told me, with tears running down 
her cheeks, that it hurt her more than it hurt me for her 
to whip me as she did; at which in my inner soul I laughed 
sardonically, for if it hurt her why didn’t she stop? She 
told me that I would grow up in ignorance. I would break 
my mother’s heart and make my father poor buying me 
first readers. I went out from that closet with the evil 
smell of girls’ hats and cloaks in my nostrils and with 
black despair in my heart. 

When Cousin Sidney came home, for she lived with us, 
she cried and told my mother, and my mother cried and 
whipped me again; and all this bother because I would not 
learn my letters. If they had only let me alone my letters 
would have learned themselves. I never did learn my 
letters. From constant iteration and reiteration on the 
part of the other children I learned my first reader by 
heart and could read it looking out of the window. ‘This 
was also an offence for which IJ suffered punishment. 

But confinement in school had its compensation; it gave 
added value to the freedom of the divine outdoors. With 
a shout of joy we escaped from the durance of school into 
the liberty of nature—the great teacher who taught us by 


20 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the seeing of the eye and the hearing of the ear, whose 
letter was the violet and the daffodil, and whose voice was 
the voice of the blue jay and the oriole. 

I am told that children run to school to-day as we used 
to run away from it. I am glad of this, and yet I am 
afraid lest the instruction of the schools should usurp that 
instruction which is unlettered and cannot be printed on 
the pages of a book; that divine instruction which must 
be read directly from the pages of the earth and the 
sky; the letters of which are the flowers and the stars. 
And I am also afraid of that which we worship to-day 
as science, which seeks to make of nature a bond-slave 
of our industrial system, to sell her secrets as if she were a 
harlot, in the markets of the world. 

When I was about eight years old my father removed 
from the town of Fairmount to the village of College 
Hill, where we resided for four years. During this period 
I learned my letters and mastered the rudiments of what 
is called education. Leaving College Hill at the expiration 
of the four years, we made our home in the city of 
Cincinnati. 

While we were living in College Hill, my father gave 
the most of his time to an effort to create a pleasure park 
for the benefit of the people of Cincinnati; this to the 
neglect of his business. ‘The scheme was a failure. 


CHAPTER VII 
NECESSITY CALLS TO WORK 


T this time anxiety was a guest in our household. 
My father could not easily recover his failing 
practice. 

Our only certain source of income came from my grand- 
father’s estate and this was dwindling away. There is 
nothing sadder in this sad world than the failing fortunes 
of a once well-to-do household. Day by day the ghost of 
want sits at table; clothing becomes shabby; food scanty; 
debts increase and friends fall away. The world says of 
the head of such a household, ‘‘He’s a has-been.’ Success 
passes him by with a rush, and he must admit the sad fact 
of his failure and adjust himself to the conditions of that 
failure. 

It was this low estate at home, together with my natural 
repulsion to the dullness and futility of my life at school, 
that moved me, one morning, to turn away from the road 
to the school and go down into the streets of the city in 
search of a job. Fifth Street was the centre of the larger 
retail business of Cincinnati. ‘To this street I made my 
way, reaching the centre at about ten in the morning. At 
first I walked up and down the street, with my heart in my 
mouth, not daring to go into any of the stores that lined 
the way. At last I summoned my courage, went into one 
door after another, gaining bravery with each rebuff, until 
I came to the dry-goods store of Cole and Hopkins, on the 
corner of Fifth and Pine. Entering this large establish- 


ment, I timidly approached a black-bearded man standing 
21 


22, THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


in the aisle, and asked him if he wanted a boy. He looked 
at me with a kindly face, asked me some questions, then 
motioned to a big blond man, standing near, to come to him. 
The dark man and the blond man talked together, look- 
ing me over the while. Then the dark man asked me if 
I knew anyone near by who could speak for me. [ in- 
stantly remembered that a cousin, George Morris, was a 
librarian in a near-by library. I ran over to him; he came 
with me to the store, and told the black man and the blond 
man who I was. His recommendation being sufficient, I 
was employed on the instant as a cash boy in this store 
of Cole and Hopkins, the second largest in the city; the 
black man was Mr. Cole; the blond man Mr. Hopkins. 

I was in my eleventh year when I thus entered upon 
business life, and with one brief exception I never went to 
school again until I was twenty years old. 

When I came home and told my mother what I had 
done, she cried and said that I could not, must not leave 
school and go to work. What would people say when 
they heard that the grandson of Thomas Morris was cash 
boy in Cole and Hopkins’? When Father came home and 
the matter was discussed in the family council, my father 
said, “You had better let the boy do what he wants to do, 
Mrs. Crapsey. As for school, life is the best school of all, 
and your father, Senator Morris, began his life as a squat- 
ter, making his living by the work of his own hands. It 
seems to me that Algernon has shown enterprise and deci- 
sion. We had better let him have his own way.” 
Whether this reasoning convinced my mother or not, I can- 
not say, but I do know that I was up bright and early 
the next morning without being called. My mother was 
likewise out of bed, and in the kitchen. She made me a 
hot breakfast, packed my lunch box and, with tears stream- 
ing down her cheeks, kissed me good-bye, and I went 
proudly, in the early morning light, down the hill to Vine 


NECESSITY CALLS TO WORK 23 


Street, through Vine Street, ‘“‘over the Rhine,’’ down to my 
place of business in the city. 

In exchange for my talent and my time I received the 
princely sum of one dollar a week. Do not scorn me, dear 
reader, for a dollar was a dollar in those days; it bought 
all my clothes, gave me my spending-money, and enabled 
me to help a little with the family expenses. When the 
first Christmas of my business life came, I took my dollar 
and bought my mother a toilet case for her Christmas 
present. I went up early in the morning before she was 
out of bed and said, ‘‘Mother, here’s a little Christmas 
present; I bought it with my own money.” Then my 
mother drew me up on the bed, took me in her arms, 
hugged and kissed me, laughed and cried and said she was 
proud of me, and we were as happy together as though 
my present had cost a hundred dollars instead of a single 
dollar. 

When I started in business a cash boy was a cash boy; 
when a sale was made the clerk would rap on the counter 
with his pencil and cry ‘‘Cash”’; then the cash boy would 
scurry to the call, take the goods and the cash to the desk; 
the bundle boy would tie up the goods, the cashier make 
the change; the cash boy would carry the bundle and the 
change to the clerk at the counter, and that transaction 
was closed. It was an exciting occupation; it was run, run, 
run all the day. ‘The boy learned to be sharp and quick, 
to call down the bundle boy, chide the cashier; for woe 
betide the boy who was wrong with his change. If it was 
too little, the cashier would say the cash boy stole it; if 
it was too much, the cashier would say, ‘‘The cash boy 
ought to ’a’ known it afore he took it from the desk.” 
Once I remember some money was lost; the cashier said I 
took it. I said I didn’t. When Mr. Hopkins came along 
I cried and said, ‘Mr. Hopkins, Cashier says I stole 
seventy-five cents. Do you think I ud do it?” Mr. Hop- 


24 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


kins laughed and said, ‘‘No, I don’t think a grandson of 
Thomas Morris would steal seventy-five cents”; and so I 
went free, thanks to Grandpa. 

A dry-goods store in those days was a dry-goods store 
and it was nothing else. We didn’t demean ourselves to sell 
gumdrops and popcorn and soda water and candy. Not 
we; we sold cottons and silks, woollens and linens. It was 
a man’s job; no skirts were allowed behind the counters. 
No long-legged girls answered to the call of ‘‘Cash! Cash!” 
I followed this calling for nearly two years, when my 
father was retained in a lawsuit involving millions of 
money. The retaining-fees lightened the financial gloom 
of the family. My mother said I ought to go back to 
school. I agreed, and so brought to a close this first 
episode of my active business life. 


CHAPTER VIII 


WAR’S ALARMS 


HEN I went back to school, a lad of fourteen, I 
\) \) had to begin where I had left off and was graded 
with boys of ten and eleven. It is true that I 
had learned in the world of business what I could never have 
learned in the school, but this availed me not at all. 
Knowledge of the world and knowledge of books have little 
in common; proficiency in the one gives one no credit in the 
other. Because of this I, a tall growing boy, was placed 
with the little shavers in the lower forms. ‘This was not 
only disgraceful, it was deadly dull. After submitting to 
this humiliation from the summer opening to the Christmas 
holidays, I gave it up and never was subjected again to the 
confinement of the desk and the indignity of the ferule. 
My next venture in life was equally unfortunate. A 
cousin, Edward Morris, was a partner in a hardware 
factory, the firm name being Hollingshead, Morris and 
Company, and a place was made for me in this enterprise. 
Of all places in the world, none is harder to fill than a place 
that is made for one. What is gained by favour is lost 
by disfavour. JI had in this factory nothing in particular 
to do and did it with great zeal and constancy. I was not 
one of those story-book boys who go smelling after work 
as a dog after a cat. I never ran after work, but waited 
with patience for work to come to me. ‘This did not raise 
me in the esteem of my employers. When I was a cash 
boy, I was busy all the day; when I was supposed to be 


a handy lad of all work, I did little or nothing, 
25 


26 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


One hot day in August as I was standing idly in the 
doorway of the factory, watching the traffic of the street, 
the younger Mr. Hollingshead came along and gave me 
“down the banks.”’ He told me that I was an idle, good- 
for-nothing boy, that I didn’t earn my wages, and, without 
further words, turned on his heel and left. He didn’t dare 
give me my discharge for I was the cousin of his partner 
and the grandson of Thomas Morris—fatal pedigree. 

When I reflected upon the censure that I had received, 
I could not but admit that it was deserved, and that my 
situation was intolerable; so without further ado, I took 
my hat and jacket off the peg and went down to the station, 
took the first northbound train to Camp Dennison, and en- 
listed for a soldier in Company B, 79th Ohio Volunteer 
Infantry. ‘This action liberated my soul. I was no longer 
in a place that was made for me, but in a place that I had 
made for myself. I selected this regiment and company 
because Captain West, its commander, was a friend of the 
family. It was fortunate for me that the captain was not 
in the camp that day; had he been, I am quite sure he would 
have packed me off home with a flea in my ear. 

When I thus entered upon my military career, I was in 
the first quarter of my fourteenth year; was small for my 
age, and pink and white like a girl. I am still wondering 
how I passed muster. It was seen at once that I was too 
young for the line, but what then—could I not enroll as a 
musician? When the sergeant suggested this, I jumped 
at it. When I was asked if I would be a drummer boy, I 
rejected the proposition with scorn. What instrument 
would I play? I answered proudly, ‘“The bugle,”’ and the 
bugle it was; and without further ado I was sworn in as a 
soldier to serve for three years, or during the war. 

I made this great adventure in mid-August, in the year 
1862, the worst year of the war. Lee and Jackson had 
driven the Federal army to the banks of the James River, 


WAR’S ALARMS 27 


had beaten Pope to a frazzle at Bull Run the Second, and 
put Washington in danger. Halleck had fumbled affairs 
in the West, had done all he could to frustrate the genius 
of Grant, and, as a reward, had been given the command 
of the armies of the United States. 

It was at this perilous moment that I entered the breach 
to save my country from final ruin. I enlisted in mid- 
August and in early September was in active service. No 
year of training was permitted us. Our enemy was not 
beyond the sea on the banks of the Marne; but, in the 
person of General Kirby Smith, he was near Lexington 
and coming as fast as his soldiers could march to capture 
and hold the city of Cincinnati. Without training, with- 
out proper equipment, almost unarmed, our regiment was 
hurried over the river and entrenched on the Covington 
Hills. ‘There was no bugle to be had for the bugler, and 
if there had been a thousand bugles, so far as I was con- 
cerned, they would have been useless, for I had no more 
knowledge of the art or science of music than a brass 
monkey. So there was nothing for me but to be degraded 
to the ranks, which degradation I accepted with joy as 
a promotion. 

One Sunday afternoon my father came over to visit me 
in the camp; he brought me a revolver, the barrel of which 
was at least two feet long, and with that weapon I was 
to win the war. My father spent the night in the camp. 
In the early hours of the morning, in the deep darkness 
before the dawn, we were startled from our sleep by the 
beating of the long roll; the bells of Covington, Newport 
and Cincinnati were ringing a wild alarm. Kirby Smith 
was coming with his rebel horde to capture our army, burn 
our cities, ravish our women and slay our children: ‘Those 
were times when anything, no matter how atrocious, found 
ready belief. To avert these disasters, our regiment stood 
as a bulwark between the foe and our women and children. 


28 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


My father stood at my side with my revolver cocked and 
ready in his hand; I with my musket, with bayonet in 
place, waiting to repel the rebel host or die in the attempt. 
Kirby Smith must have learned of the fate that awaited 
him for he never came to test our valour, and Cincinnati 
was safe; its wives and children in no further danger of 
outrage. 

In a few days our brigade, under the command of Colonel 
Ward, was embarked on_a flotilla of river steamers and 
transferred to Louisville to reinforce the army of General 
Buell, then confronting the rebel army under General 
Bragg. Our regiment was in the command of Lieutenant 
Colonel Doane; our Company B was under Lieutenant 
Thompson. Neither our colonel nor our captain had made 
his appearance. Captain West joined us on our way south- 
ward. Colonel Kenneth showed the white feather, and 
Papa Doane, as we called him, remained in command to 
the end of the war, rising to the rank of brigade- 
commander. 

Our regiment was stationed a few miles from Louisville. 
We were within hearing of the battle of Perryville, but 
were not called into action. Had Buell made use of all 
the forces within his reach he could have turned that drawn 
battle into a rout. If Thomas had not magnanimously 
refused the command of the army just before that battle 
there would have been a different story to tell and Bragg 
would have been driven from Kentucky, his army ruined, 
if not captured. But it was not to be. Rosecrans suc- 
ceeded Buell in command, and we began the slow pursuit 
of Bragg’s forces through the State of Kentucky. For raw 
troops that was a cruel experience. We were without 
proper camp equipment, without tents, and half the time 
without rations. It was in the fall of the year and we were 
marching into the mountain region of Kentucky, exposed 
day and night to the weather. It was very warm when 


WAR’S ALARMS 29 


we started on our march and many of the soldiers threw 
away their blankets. I am glad to say that I was more 
prudent. The extent of my prudence may be measured 
by the fact that I was carrying an equipment almost equal 
to my own weight. My musket, my blanket, my knap- 
sack, my haversack, my clothing weighed about sixty pounds. 
I weighed less than a hundred. Many and many a day I 
marched for more than twenty miles carrying this load, 
having a little coffee, hardtack and sowbelly for breakfast; 
hardtack and sowbelly pierced by a stick and toasted over 
a fire for dinner, and went supperless to bed on the ground 
under the open sky. I shall always remember one such 
day of discomfort. We had outmarched our wagons and 
after a hard day’s travel, in which we had fed upon the 
contents of our haversacks, were encamped on a hill-side; 
we had to stay ourselves with rails to keep from rolling 
down while the rain poured upon us all through the night. 
Could we sleep? A dead-tired man can sleep anywhere; 
not arctic cold, not torrid heat, nor rain from heaven nor 
fires of hell can keep him awake. 

During all this march I was in the ranks doing my full 
duty. I was on guard in my turn day and night, and when 
at some lonely post I was never afraid—not afraid of the 
dark, nor afraid of the foe. Captain West tried to pre- 
vent this; he was very angry with the corporal of the 
guard. He said with an oath, “This boy is not to be 
placed on guard at night.’”’ But I said, “I came out here 
to see the fun and I am going to see it.’’ I did not say 
this to my captain. I said it to myself, and went on guard 
in my turn just the same. 

I have another story to tell of the power of fatigue 
to compel sleep. We had been marching all day through 
the rain, one of those tiresome marches, when you march 
and stop, march and stop, because your officers do not know 
how to clear the road. We were approaching Frankfort, 


30 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the capital of the State. Just at nightfall we came to the 
Kentucky river; a halt was called, and in a moment, as if 
stricken with death, the men fell in their tracks and were 
sound asleep in an instant. I looked on that sight with 
horror. 

By and by came the sharp command “Attention!” 
‘Shoulder arms, forward march!” and we passed over the 
bridge into Frankfort. The rebel army, together with the 
legislature which had just passed an ordinance of secession, 
had fled the city; we were received by the loyal inhabitants 
with royal welcome. We were encamped in the city square, 
feasted upon hot biscuits and hot coffee, corn pone and 
roast pig, chicken and cakes, shook hands with the men 
and kissed the girls. One good mother, seeing how little 
I was, took pity on me and wished to take me to her 
home, but I was too happy where I was to wish for further 
happiness. ‘The soldiers painted the town red that night 
—Bourbon whisky was to be had for the asking. 

The boys filled the State House, organized a House of 
Representatives and a Senate, repealed, with wild cheering, 
the ordinance of secession, and placed the Blue Grass State 
back in the Union, where it has remained, all snug and safe, 
ever since. 

We were held for several days in camp at Frankfort. 
The tired men and still more tired mules were given a 
needed rest. Every man was supplied with a blanket; the 
tents were put in order and the army made as comfortable 
as possible against the coming winter. It was about the 
first of November when we started on our long hike as the 
rear of Rosecrans’ army, which was moving southward 
following Bragg’s army, that after the battle of Perryville 
had fallen back upon its line in middle Tennessee. We 
were in the high hills and it was bitter cold. I marched 
with my company carrying my full equipment. As we were 
going uphill our progress was slow and our spirits were 


WAR’S ALARMS 31 


low. There was no singing or cheering. In almost sullen 
silence we climbed the hills, halted at noon, made our coffee, 
toasted our hardtack (a very big hard biscuit) and our 
sowbelly (a coarse, fat, salt pork), and huddled about 
our fires until the bugle called us to our ranks and the 
command “Forward march!” set us once more on our 
weary way. 

We reached the border of Tennessee on the 30th day of 
November; it was Thanksgiving season, but there was .no 
turkey nor cranberry sauce for us; no grandpa nor grandma 
at our table. A deep sadness pervaded the ranks as 
thoughts of home and its comforts haunted our souls. 
We said little and that little had better been left unsaid. 
We offered no prayer of thanksgiving. We damned the 
rebels; we cursed the politicians; we jeered at our generals. 
Our brigadier, “Old Ward,” as we called him, was a gruff 
fellow for whom we had no affection. Rosecrans, the 
commander of the army, inspired no confidence: For the 
private soldier war is a grim game; his is the killing and 
the dying; if he wins he gains no glory; that goes to the 
General commanding; if he loses, his is the shame! He 
surrenders his personality; he is not a name, he is a number; 
when the battle is over his shattered body may lie for hours 
on the ground where it fell, and his unshriven soul goes 
out into the darkness with no pity to soothe its agony, no 
love to light its way. 

It was in some such spirit of despondency that I greeted 
the light of the morning of the thirtieth of November; the 
cold was intense; the snow was falling, the wind cutting 
like a razor. We broke camp in the early morning and 
made our way slowly up the mountain in silent suffering. 
We were marching in files of four and I was leader at 
the end of a file. When the noon hour came we did not 
halt for dinner, because of the cold, but were hurried on that 
we might camp in the early afternoon and have the heat 


q2 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


of our fires and the protection of our tents. Just at noon- 
tide the adjutant of the regiment came riding down the line. 
When he came to the file, of which I was the left-hand 
leader, he reined in his horse and looked at me; his lips 
were blue with cold; his eyes alight with pitiful kindness; 
he dismounted, and, without saying a word, took away my 
gun, lifted me into the saddle and took my place as left- 
hand leader in my file. It was a kindly act, but it was a 
kindness that killed—my only safety was in motion; it was 
fatal for me to sit still. The slow walking of the horse, 
the constraint necessary to my keeping in the saddle, chilled 
the blood in my veins. When we reached the camp all 
power of motion was gone. I sat, a frozen figure, on 
my horse. My comrades lifted me from the saddle, 
wrapped me in my blanket, and ‘when our tent was pitched, 
carried me in, and with a blanket under me laid me on 
the ground. When the fires were made and the dinner 
was ready, my mate brought me coffee and beans; the coffee 
I drank greedily, but the sight of the beans turned my 
stomach. All the afternoon I lay half conscious in the 
corner of the tent. When the drums beat for evening 
roll call, I could not answer to my name and no one 
answered for me and I was entered on the roll as absent 
without leave. 

When my comrades came in from supper they found 
me shivering like an aspen, sick at my stomach and delirious. 
The doctors were hastily called. I was carried to the 
hospital tent where the surgeon and his assistant worked 
over me all through the night. I was never told the name 
of my particular sickness but presume that it was pneu- 
monia. Our regiment lay in camp on the border of Ten- 
nessee until Christmas-time and I was cared for in the 
hospital tent. In any well-ordered universe that should 
have been the end of Algernon. But that was not to be; 


WAR’S ALARMS a 


the universe apparently had use for him in this human 
sphere for the next fifty years and more. 

In some three weeks I was sufficiently recovered to return 
to my tent, but was not fit for duty. I lay for a fortnight 
in the corner close under the canvas, half hidden from the 
men; they ignored my presence and I could not help hearing 
what they said'to one another. In that charming book, 
“The Education of Henry Adams,” the author tells us that 
his friend, Clarence King, once said that this world of ours 
might have been a tolerable success but for the inclination 
of the earth’s axis to the plane of its ecliptic and the dif- 
ferentiation of the sexes. Mr. Adams seems to have 
agreed with his friend in this judgment. But with all due 
modesty, I beg to dissent from the dictum of these high 
authorities. It seems to me that the Creative Powers knew 
what they were about when they inclined the earth’s axis 
to the plane of its ecliptic and differentiated the sexes; for 
without this inclination there would be no weather; with- 
out this differentiation there would be no women; and if 
there were no weather and no women, pray what would 
men have to talk about? Think of a world in which a 
man could never say, “It’s damned hot’’; “It’s beastly cold” ; 
Fvinitshew a, \peacii?, ; \ohe’s, some, girl!) No! ‘The 
Creative Power had pity on the vacuity of the ordinary 
male mind and gave him two subjects for unending conver- 
sation. Long before I had so much as heard of Henry 
Adams or of Clarence King I had mastered the vast impor- 
tance of weather and women in the conversational life of 
mankind. 

I had my first knowledge of this as I lay and listened to 
the talk of the men in my tent. These men were young 
men, between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five. They 
had come from the small towns and the farms; they were 
clerks in stores, farmer’s sons, lawyers, and one of them was 


34 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


a schoolmaster. ‘The tales these young men had to tell of 
their doings with women would have brought the blush of 
shame to the cheeks of Margaret of Navarre and made the 
“Decameron” an innocent book. If the stories of these 
men had any foundation in fact, the notion of the greater 
virtue of the women of the country as compared with the 
women of the city must be dismissed as idle, untrue to fact. 
Not one of these young men but had his tale of illicit love. 
The most boastful Lothario of them all was the school- 
master. As part of his recompense he was boarded round 
by the patrons of his school and his talk reeked with the 
salacious accounts of his amours with the wives and 
daughters of his hosts; his descriptions were not veiled in 
decent phrase; he left nothing to the imagination, and the 
men that listened shouted with laughter at the more nau- 
scous of his words. 

I was too young and too sick to be moved by this erotic 
conversation, but it did put evil thoughts in my mind 
against which I had to struggle through all the earlier 
years of my life, and left me with a debased opinion of 
both men and women. I must, of course, have learned of 
this evil at some period of my life, but never perhaps in 
a way so harmful to my moral nature. 

As we lay in the camp guarding the railway that was 
the line of communication between the army of Rosecrans 
and its supplies, we were subject not only to the debasing 
moral influence of camp life, but were also devastated by its 
physical impurities. The sanitary conditions of the camp 
were deplorable. Every day we would hear the drums 
beat the dead march as some poor victim of military routine 
and medical incapacity was buried in the trench that was 
always open, ready for the next comer. 

These sights and sounds had a most deleterious effect 
upon my soul and body. I lost my manhood and was 
dying of nostalgia. I wanted nothing but to go home. 


WAR’S ALARMS BS 


I wanted my mother—my heart became hypertrophied, 
not surely from excess of nutrition, but from excess of 
sorrow. 

One day the doctors came in to see me, and [ heard one 
of them say to the other, ‘I guess we had better send him 
home and let his mother see him before he dies. The poor 
brat should never have been enlisted; he’s not the sort for 
this kind of work.’’ So I was sent down to the General 
Hospital at Nashville, was examined and, as a result-of 
that examination, was duly discharged from the Army of 
the United States, never to be re-enlisted, because of this 
hypertrophied heart. 

In this manner did my military career come to an igno- 
minious end, and yet I am glad of that experience. I was 
in my little way part and parcel of one of the greatest 
wars in human history; a war that made the American 
Continent, in measure, “‘safe for Democracy’’; it destroyed 
for ever the institution of human slavery, and by a happy 
accident it brought into history one of the greatest States- 
men and purest souls known to the annals of mankind. It 
has been my high privilege to serve in my small way the 
cause of Jesus of Nazareth and of Abraham Lincoln. 
What greater destiny can any man crave? 


CHAPTER IX 


I WALK IN HIGH PLACES 


HEN I reached home after my long journey from 

\) \ Nashville, it seemed as though I had come home 

to die. I was so pale and peaked that my 
mother was greatly alarmed. She called in the family phy- 
sician who, after examination, reassured my mother, telling 
her that while my condition was serious, yet with care I 
could come through and live as long as I wanted to live. 
And the doctor spake sooth; I had the care; I did come 
through, and I have lived as long as I have wanted to live. 

I kept my bed for a month, was kissed and coddled, 
given chicken broth and toast, porridge and tea until I 
was strong enough to be on my feet and walk about the 
house. When I wearied of this confinement, my father 
asked me if I would care to go down and keep his office 
for him. I agreed and the next morning entered upon 
my duties. 

My father’s ofice was on Walnut Street, near the corner 
of Sixth Street in Bacon’s Building. It was on the second 
floor in the rear. ‘The office was a long narrow room 
with lofty ceiling; looking out of the window one had a 
view of the backs of the buildings on Vine Street, with 
about fifty feet of space between; this space was a catch- 
all for the rubbish of the tenants of the various buildings, 
barrels and boxes, old hats and boots and sometimes a 
dead cat or two. It was not a view to charm the eye of 
one who had been out in the open climbing the mountains, 


in the shadow of the pine forests, watching eagles and 
36 


I WALK IN HIGH PLACES 3/ 
hawks as they mounted upward and were lost in the grey- 
blue of the sky. 

The office itself was not a lively place in which to pass 
the day; its walls were lined with shelves filled with law 
books; it was in the shadow of the high buildings beyond 
and was as quiet as a graveyard at midnight. As the 
keeper of this office, it was my duty to tell anyone who 
called that my father “wasn’t in,’ which this caller might 
have seen for himself, and if he asked when Lawyer Crap- 
sey would be in, to answer “I didn’t know.” It would 
seem that the office might just as well have kept itself; 
as indeed it had before I came home. I was there only 
because just then I had nowhere else to go. 

My father was no longer in general practice; he was 
fully occupied with the Whitewater case and his one client 
was Colonel West, an old man with plenty of money. 
He was not only a client, he was a friend; he called my 
father “Judge,” and.my father called him ‘Colonel.’ 
Though my father had never been on the bench, nor West 
at the head of a regiment, West might come into the office 
of a morning; he would sit for an hour or two, or three 
hours, damning the courts, telling stories; my father taking 
up the refrain, talking Whitewater, discoursing on the law’s 
delays and so beguiling the morning away; when the Colonel 
would say, ‘“‘Come, Judge, let’s go to dinner”; and to dinner 
they would go and that was the last that I would see of 
them that day. I had my lunch in my basket; after eating 
it, the long afternoon lay before me in which I had nothing 
to do. 

After a day or two of this kind of life I was bored to 
madness. I tried the law books, but their dry lore did 
not relieve the tedium of my soul. I was in despair and 
was about to desert my post when I found a way out of 
this dullness into a way of life and light and joy, so 
that I look back to the months that I spent in my father’s 


38 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


office, not only with delight, but with gratitude. In those 
months I laid the foundations of my future career. Just 
below Bacon’s Building was a library. One noon hour 
after my father and Colonel West had gone to Hofmei- 
ster’s Garden for dinner, I went to this library and took 
out a book, and with this book under my arm, came back 
to the office and spent the afternoon in the company of 
the writer of that book. I do not remember the name of 
that writer nor the title of his book, but whoever he was, 
I owe him a debt that I can never repay. Of one thing 
I am sure, this book was no trashy novel; it might have 
been Hume’s “History of England” or Bishop Berkeley’s 
“Treatise on LTar-water,’” but whatever it was, it was for 
me an introduction into the great universe of letters. As 
soon as I had finished that book I took out another. I 
was up bright and early in the morning that I might the 
sooner enjoy the master minds who gave to me so freely 
of their wisdom and their wit. While Lawyer Crapsey 
and Colonel West were talking Whitewater, I was sitting 
in a far corner of the room, deaf to their voices, absorbed 
in the adventures of ‘“Tom Jones” or the wickedness of 
‘Ferdinand Count Fathom,” or the vagaries of ‘Tristram 
Shandy.” During that period of my life I read the Eng- 
lish classics in history, in philosophy and belles-lettres. I 
read such writers as Hume, Robertson and Mackintosh in 
the department of history, Fielding, Smollett, Richardson 
and Sterne, in the realm of the novel, while Addison, Steele 
and Goldsmith were my masters in the style and form of 
the essay. 

From that time to this, reading has been not only a 
habit but a passion. In the first glow of that passion I 
lived with my love. I will confess that I was no monog- 
amist with books. I had a new mistress every week. I 
came under the spell of the Wizard of the North and would 
spend a day and half the night absorbed in “The Heart of 


I WALK IN HIGH PLACES 39 
Midlothian” or “Guy Mannering” or “The Black Dwarf.” 


The youth of my generation had an advantage unknown 
to the boys and girls of the present time. The novels of 
Dickens, Thackeray and George Eliot came to us fresh 
from the press; “Pickwick,” ‘‘Vanity Fair’ and ‘Adam 
Beed”’ were received by us as a mother welcomes a new- 
born child. Macaulay’s essays and history carried us away 
with their vehement eloquence. Prescott’s ‘Ferdinand and 
Isabella,” “Conquest of Mexico” and ‘‘Conquest of Peru”’ 
made known to us the romance of our own Continent, while 
Washington Irving gave us unending delight with his 
Knickerbocker’s History and his stories, ‘Rip Van Winkle” 
and the ‘Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” I am glad that it 
was my lot to be a late Victorian; to have lived when 
Scott was still in fashion, when Ruskin was writing his 
‘(Modern Painters” and Carlyle his ‘‘French Revolution.” 
I do not deny the brilliant fecundity of the present time, 
but I do affirm that “‘Middlemarch”’ is a more perfect form 
of the realistic novel than ‘‘Main Street,” and the English 
of Goldsmith more rhythmic and convincing than the Eng- 
lish of The Freeman, but this may be the prejudiced judg- 
ment of an old man, and my reader may discount it as 
he will. 

I only wish to say that my education is the education of 
a reader rather than of a student. I read for the pleasure 
of reading with no thought beyond the present enjoyment. 
It was the intense heat of that enjoyment which made my 
reading a permanent possession of my mind and soul: The 
meaning of my author was burned into my understanding; 
unconsciously I was laying up in store material for future 
use. As the main business of my life was to be public 
speaking I could have had no better preparation than that 
which my reading gave me. ‘The one principle that guided 
me in my reading was that the book should be interesting. 


A dull book with me was a discarded book. I shall speak 


4O THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


of this again when I come to compare my scholastic educa- 
tion with the self-education which was the outcome of the 
experience of my life and the product of the reading of 
my own choosing. 

It was during this period that I discovered the Bible. 
We had a large Bible with brass clasps on the centre table, 
but I never opened it. I went to church sometimes with 
my mother, and the preacher read out of the Bible in 
preacher style, but I never listened. From what little I 
knew of it I was not attracted to the Bible; it was to me a 
sacred and a stupid book; it was a holy book and I left 
it alone in its holiness. 

But in a single hour this attitude was swept away and 
the Bible became to me an inspiration and a delight. It 
came to pass in this wise: 

One winter’s night in this year of my idleness I was 
strolling through Fourth Street in the city of Cincinnati. 
It was the Sabbath and the stores were closed. ‘The rising 
wind was blowing the snow against my face, so when | 
came to a lighted building I turned in to escape the rigour 
of the storm. The place of my shelter was Christ’s Epis- 
copal Church. I had never been in an Episcopal church 
in my life and became at once deeply engaged in what was 
going on. The dress of the ministers, the form of the 
prayers, the alternate reading of the psalms gave me the 
impression of a reverent and solemn dignity which I had 
until then never known. In due time one of the white- 
robed ministers came down to the front of the platform 
and read a chapter from the Bible. This man was a reader 
of rare merit. He read not only with his lips, but with 
his understanding also. He conveyed to us both the sound 
and the meaning of the words. It was Sexagesima Sunday 
and the lesson was written in the book of the prophet Jere- 
miah at Chapter 36, in which is told the story of the 
burning of the book of the prophet by Jehoiakin the King. 


I WALK IN HIGH PLACES 41 


I was instantly captured and carried away by this dramatic 
narrative. I was no longer in Christ Church, Cincinnati. 
I was in the city of Jerusalem in the days of Jehoiakin the 
King. I heard Jeremiah give his command to Baruch the 
Scribe to read the scroll of his book in the ears of the 
people in the Lord’s House on the fasting-day. I heard 
Michaiah, the son Gemariah, who heard this reading tell 
the Princes in the Chamber of Elishama the Scribe, of the 
fearful prophecies he had heard in the Temple. I saw 
Baruch in this Chamber of Elishama the Scribe at the com- 
mand of Elishama read this book of Jeremiah the Prophet 
in the ears of the Princes that sat in the Chamber of Elish- 
ama the Scribe. I heard the Princes tell Baruch to go and 
hide himself, he and Jeremiah the Prophet. And I saw 
Elishama the Scribe and all the Princes take this book, 
which Baruch had read in their ears, in their hands and 
go down with that book to the King who sat in a chamber 
in his winter house, and there was a fire on the hearth. 
And as Elishama the Scribe read a page of the scroll 
of the book of the prophet Jeremiah, then Jehoiakin cut 
away that page with his penknife and threw it on the fire 
that was on the hearth, and so did he until all the pages 
of the book were consumed by the fire that was on the 
hearth. 

This reading swept my soul along as on the winds of 
imagination, into an entirely new region of thought and 
feeling. I did not follow the rest of the worship, but was 
held spellbound by the power of this ancient poet. As 
soon as the congregation was dismissed I left the church, 
hurried home, found the place in the Bible where that 
story was written, and read it for myself with growing 
enthusiasm. I followed up this reading with the reading 
of the whole book of Jeremiah, the book of Isaiah and all 
the prophetic and historic books, the Psalms and Job. So 
I came to know my Bible, not as a book apart, but as be- 


42 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


longing to the literature of the world. I came to know 
Jacob, the son of Isaac, as well as I knew my own father 
Jacob, the son of John. The Bible became my constant 
companion. I absorbed its language so it became to me 
as my mother tongue. I became imbued with its spirit and 
went frequently to the Episcopal church for the purpose 
of listening to the reading. But I gradually abandoned 
this practice because I could not put up with the slovenly 
reading of my favourite book by the common run of the 
clergy. 

I looked back on that Sexagesima Sunday night as the 
date of my conversion. The religion of the great prophets 
became my religion. I became a disciple of Isaiah, the 
son of Amoz, who to this day is my master in the realm 
of religious thought and life. I still consider him the great 
fundamental thinker on these subjects. It was his words 
that four centuries later inspired Jesus, the son of Joseph, 
to preach his gospel of peace to the people. 

This change in mental and spiritual attitude was not 
made known to the world about me, not to my mother, 
much less to my father. I was hardly conscious of it my- 
self. J went on my way without reckoning with this new 
experience. The winter passed, the summer came and I 
was reasonably well again and anxious for active life. I 
left my father’s office with regret. It became to me a 
sacred place; while sitting in its quiet gloom I was carried 
up by the spirit of knowledge and the spirit of wisdom 
and had walked in high places with God and Men. 


CHAPTER X 


WHITES AND BLACKS 


aR HE summer had come again and I was longing for 
the open sky and the open road, for the woods 
and the hills. The outlook from our office win- 
dow over the back yards with their debris of old cans and 
dead cats was more depressing under June than under Jan- 
uary skies. I was approaching my sixteenth birthday and 
the stir of adventure was in my blood. Keeping my 
father’s office was slow work and no pay, and I was amb- 
tious for active and profitable employment, and in due time 
my ambition was gratified. 

It was my habit to scan the want column in the Morning 
Gazette, hoping to find someone who wanted me, and one 
morning toward the end of June my search was rewarded. 
To my delight I read: “Wanted, a young man to take 
charge of a store at the Watson Salt Wells on the Kanawha 
River. Only young men of experience need apply. Write 
to or call on Watson and Watson, 36 Water Street. Boat 
leaves Friday.” 

I had hardly finished reading this enticing advertisement, 
before my hat was in my hand and I was running through 
the hall, down the stairs, out into the street; nor did I stop 
running until I came to No. 36 Water Street, to the ware- 
house of Watson and Watson. I had great difficulty in 
persuading Mr. Watson that I was a young man; in his eyes 
I was only a boy, but when I gave him my record, told him 
I was the son of Lawyer Crapsey, referred him to the dry- 
goods house of Cole and Hopkins, and related my army 

43 


44 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


experience, he admitted that I had earned the right to call 
myself a young man. After making inquiries of Cole and 
Hopkins, and talking with my father, Mr. Watson gave 
me the employment that I desired. From the month of 
July, 1863, to the month of January, 1864, I was to be 
the storekeeper in the salt yards of Watson and Watson 
on the Kanawha River, my pay twenty-five dollars a month 
with food and lodging. When I came home with the news 
everyone was delighted. My mother said that the change 
and the mountain air was just what I needed to complete 
the restoration of my health. 

Two busy days were spent in darning and washing and 
packing, and on the given Friday I made my way down 
to the wharf, my father going with me, and at four o’clock 
was on board the Charleston steamer. At five o’clock my 
father said good-bye as the whistle blew all ashore. When 
all were ashore that were going ashore, the plank was 
pulled up, the steamer gave her farewell scream, backed 
out into the middle of the river, turned her nose up-stream 
and began paddling on her way to Charleston on the Kana- 
wha. ‘That voyage up the Ohio is one of the pleasant 
recollections of my life. I had a nice bunk on the lower 
deck, with hog and hominy, hot cakes and molasses, hot 
bread and coffee to satisfy the most voracious appetite. I 
sat on the deck all the day and most of the night, going in 
for meals in the daytime, and being driven in by the deck 
watch to my bunk at night. 

The weather was warm, the water was low. Twice we 
ran on a sand-bar and were delayed for several hours, but 
this delay did not trouble me. I was inno hurry. I had 
plenty to eat, a place to sleep, and was drawing eighty-three 
and a third cents a day. Why should I worry? We ar- 
rived at Charleston July first and were carried by a tug 
to the salt wells on the same day. 

When I came to my destination and had spent a day 


WHITES AND BLACKS 45 


or two in my new home I was more than satisfied with my 
adventure; I was delighted. I made my home with Mrs. 
Watson, the wife of my employer, a very charming South- 
ern lady, who was a mother to me. With us was her 
brother, a young man of twenty-five, who was the superin- 
tendent of the yards. His name was Clarkson. He was 
a Kentuckian, bright, energetic, who received me as a com- 
panion and with whom I spent many a pleasant hour. 

My storekeeping was, as we say in these days, a cinch. 
This was a Company store. The women of the workers 
came to the store for their household supplies, and their 
purchases were charged to them on the books; the amount 
of each account being deducted from the weekly wage. 
This is an evil system; it has a tendency to promote extrav- 
agance and to keep the men in debt to the Company, 
which is a condition of semi-slavery. 

But these evils were not excessive in our Company; the 
goods were excellent, the prices fair and the debts never 
burdensome. ‘The store was open from eight in the morn- 
ing until six in the evening. ‘There was never a dull hour 
in the day; a constant coming and going—chit-chat and 
chaffing all the time. The clerk had all that he could do 
to keep his head clear in the midst of the babble. With 
plenty to eat and plenty of sleep, with pure air for my 
breathing and the mountains for my worship, this life was 
true to its promise; it restored my health; it added some 
inches to my stature and gave to me an experience which 
I could have had nowhere else in the world. 

I arrived at the salt wells on the first of July, 1863. The 
country was in the throes of the Civil War. ‘Three days 
after my coming, Lee was defeated by the army of Meade 
at Gettysburg, and Pemberton had surrendered to Grant 
at Vicksburg, but these decisive events did not break the 
political silence of these mountain solitudes. 

Western Virginia had seceded from the Old Dominion 


46 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


and had just been admitted as a State in the Union. Pro- 
visions had been made in the constitution of the new State 
for the gradual extinction of slavery, but the Negro was 
still a chattel to be bought and sold as a horse or a cow. 
While a decided majority was strong for the Union, there 
was a considerable minority, equally staunch, for the South- 
ern cause. Political discussion was far too dangerous to 
be indulged in as a pastime. In the heat of discussion 
the opponents were apt to support their words by their 
blows and the quarrel to become a battle. So by common 
consent, politics were taboo. 

If the reader ask, ‘‘Of what, then, did these men talk ?” 
I answer, “Weather and women’’—“weather,”’ because they 
were always exposed to its heat and cold, its rain and shine. 
The men were always in the open while at work. The 
salt water was pumped from the wells into long shallow 
troughs, where it was subjected to a process of boiling until 
the water was evaporated and the salt left as a deposit. 

The workmen were in two shifts, the day shift, and the 
night shift. ‘The labour was not exacting. The men had 
only to keep the fires alive under the boilers and to stir 
the water from time to time with a long stick to promote 
the granulation of the salt. By day and by night, and 
especially by night, the men had nothing to do but to talk. 
I count it an advantage that I listened to that talk; it re- 
vealed to me the uttermost depth to which the depraved 
human spirit can descend. Many of these men were poor 
whites from the mountains, who had left their women at 
home and were living in concubinage with the Negro wo- 
men of the-valley. The favourite sport of the southern 
white man was to prey upon the wives and daughters of 
the black man. ‘The stories of these low adventures were 
told night after night, within the sound of the river, under 
the shadow of the mountains and by the light of the stars. 
It was not only the poor whites from the mountains who 


WHITES AND BLACKS 47 


boasted of their amours with the Negro women; the gentry 
of the valley were in this respect on a level with their men. 
The Negro husband was not supposed to have any rights 
which the white man was bound to respect. The institu- 
tion of slavery made marriage between the blacks a mere 
form to be dissolved at the will of the master. The slave 
woman was not degraded; she was ennobled when she be- 
came the concubine of a white man. A story was told me 
of a white man who met a black man weeping as if -his 
heart were breaking, and the white man said to the black 
man, “‘What’s the matta; what yo’ cryin’ for?” The black 
man sobbed out, ‘“‘Mah wife had a white chile las’ night”; 
and the white man jeered, ‘“‘What makes you cry ’bout 
that? My wife had a white chile last week; I didn’t cry; 
I was glad of it.’’ This story illustrates the tragedy of 
slavery in all its forms: The soul of the slave as well as 
his body is under the dominion of the master; to protect 
himself the slave must lie; to get a little of what is his 
own he must steal; he must stand by without a word and 
look on at the humiliation of his women. I saw this insti- 
tution in its last stages, and I can never be sufficiently 
thankful that I did my bit to put an end to it. 

It depraved everything with which it came in contact; 
the home, the State and the church. 

The religion of the poor whites and of the slaves was 
orgiastic, an emotional indulgence ending in a debauch. I 
recall a funeral conducted by a Baptist minister with a feel- 
ing of grotesque horror. The dead man had been killed 
by a falling tree; he was in his young manhood and was 
widely known in the mountains. His funeral was held 
after nightfall. People came from far and wide, lighting 
their way with tar torches. The scene of the funeral was 
the mountain-side, illuminated by a bonfire; nothing could 
have been more sublime and nothing was ever more dia- 
bolical. The preacher, half naked, jumped and screamed; 


48 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the mourners filled the air with inarticulate wailings; whisky 
was served out of buckets with a ladle, and a drunken orgy 
closed the scene. I can never think of that night without 
a chill of horror. It was the degradation of man and the 
degradation of the gods; below this neither man nor god 
could go and continue to exist. J owe to this experience 
a revulsion from the lower forms of vice such as drunken- 
ness and debauchery, which was my safety in future years. 

But all this only added to the intense interests of my life 
at the salt yards. I enjoyed every moment of it. All too 
soon the summer was over and gone; the winter came, bring- 
ing the ice that closed the river so that the shipping of the 
salt was impossible. The works were closed and I re- 
turned to my home in Cincinnati, much the wiser in every 
way for this experience. 


CHAPTER XI 
DEAD LETTERS 
| LEFT the salt works on the first day of January, 1864, 


and by continuous travel on the railway arrived at my 

home on the morning of the third and faced anew the 
problem of existence. With me the dictum of St. Paul, 
“Tf a man will not work, neither shall he eat,’ had the 
virtue of necessity. 

I began once again to scan the want columns of the 
Morning Gazette. I very soon came across an advertise- 
ment which I thought promising; it read: ‘‘Wanted, a 
young man to take charge of the office and keep the books in 
a printing-concern. Apply at No. 34 [Third Street, Cincin- 
nati.” I had mastered the principles of double-entry book- 
keeping at the salt yards and the science of office-keeping 
when in the employ of Jacob T. Crapsey, Esq., on Walnut 
Street. Thus equipped, I made my way to No. 34 Third 
Street and applied for the job as advertised. The pro- 
prietor of the establishment was one C. N. Blank—of 
course, Blank was not his name, but for the sake of his 
posterity I will use this alias. After asking a few ques- 
tions, Mr. Blank told me to hang up my hat and go to 
work, which I did. ‘The salary agreed on was fifteen dol- 
lars a week; the hours of work from eight A.M. to six P.M. 
It was about three miles from our home on Ohio Avenue 
to my office on Third Street and I walked both ways. I 
soon found that my knowledge of bookkeeping was too 
limited for efficiency; to remedy this, I entered on a course 


of study in a commercial academy in the evenings and soon 
49 


50 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


acquired sufficient knowledge to do my office work rapidly 
and easily. I also mastered commercial mathematics; 
could calculate discount and interest; beyond this I have 
never gone in mathematical science—to my very great re- 
gret. While attending night school I had my supper in 
the city and walked home when my class was dismissed. 
Because of this I enjoyed a new experience which was a 
delight at the time and an influence for good during the 
rest of my life. Walking down Vine Street I passed, every 
day, on my way to work the Vine Street Theatre. At first 
I was not attracted, but the continuous appeal of the bill- 
boards roused my curiosity; so much so that one night in- 
stead of going to school I took fifty cents of my hard- 
earned wages and, buying a ticket, entered ‘“‘the gateway 
to hell,’ as I had heard a preacher call it. I entered with 
fear and trembling, my conscience ringing its warning bell 
so that I could hear nothing else. By and by the curtain 
went up and I was soon so absorbed in what was going 
on in front of me that I could no longer hear the conscience 
bell. ‘The play was “The Flying Dutchman’’—if I remem- 
ber rightly, a story of piracy, of a ship which because of its 
sins became the Wandering Jew of the sea—it must sail on, 
sail on and still sail on. It was a sign of doom to the 
ship that encountered it on the sea. To me it was the revel- 
ation of a new world. I was late getting home, but as all 
the folk were asleep, no one knew how late it was. After 
the first sin it is easy to commit the second, so in a week 
or so, walking through Fourth Street, I saw on the bill- 
board of the Opera House the announcement of the play 
of “Hamlet”? with James E. Murdoch in the stellar role. 
That night after my supper I began to walk up and down 
Fourth Street, my heart beating to the refrain, ‘Shall I go 
or not? Shall I go or not?” stopping at the door of the 
theatre, and then passing on till the clocks began to strike 
eight; then, as my conscience said, “Shall I go?” I went, 


DEAD LETTERS SI 


buying my ticket at the window, paying the awful sum of 
a dollar for that bit of pasteboard. 

When I entered, the theatre was dark and the usher 
stumbled as he led me to my seat. I was no sooner seated 
than the curtain went up and I was looking at a sentinel 
slowly pacing his beat on the platform of the castle at 
Elsinore. And then a voice from without: ‘‘Who’s 
there?” The answer of the soldier on guard: ‘Nay, 
stand and unfold yourself.” ‘‘Long live the King” from 
without, and the sentinel, now recognizing the voice, calls 
the name ‘Bernardo.’ Then a soldier appears on the 
stage and cries, “He.” ‘Then the opening dialogue: 


Francesco. “You come most carefully upon your hour.” 
Bernardo, ‘‘’Tis now struck twelve. Get thee to bed, 


Francesco.” 
Francesco. ‘For this relief much thanks; ’tis bitter cold and I 


am sick at heart.” 


From that moment began my worship of Shakespeare. 
As the play developed I saw in these words of Francesco 
the keynote of the great drama, the undertone of the poet’s 
life. ‘These soldiers, so honest, so gentlemanly, so con- 
siderate of each other, were out in the cold and the dark; 
their virtue the guard of incest, adultery and murder. 
From that moment the theatre ceased to be to me the 
“Flouse of Sin”! It became to me the temple of truth, 
and Shakespeare, together with Isaiah and Jesus, became 
the master of my soul. 

The winter was over and gone and the bluebells were 
clothing the grass of the field. On the fifteenth morning 
in the month of April my mother and I were at breakfast, 
when my mother said, ‘‘Listen, Allie, listen to the bells! 
What can it mean?” We listened and we heard all the 
bells in the city tolling, tolling as for the dead. Mother 


a2 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


looked at me and I looked at her and we said, ‘‘What can it 
mean?” 

I rose from the table, forgetting my lunch box, ran to 
the top of the hill, and all the air about me was vibrant 
with the tolling of the bells, tolling as for the dead. I 
saw the streets of the city below me black with people. 
I ran down the hill and came to Vine Street, to the grocery 
where we traded; the grocer was standing on the street 
crying as though his heart would break. I said, ‘‘What 
is it? Why are the bells tolling?” And he said, wring- 
ing his hands, ‘He’s dead, he’s dead.” ‘‘Who’s dead?” I 
cried. ‘““The President.’ ‘“‘What, Lincoln?” “Yes, Lin- 
coln.” ‘How did he die?” ‘Some God-damned rebel 
killed hime?) When ?o\ east night!’ 0) ow re aie 
God-damned villain shot him as he sat in the theatre.” 

I looked and saw all the people running, the men, the 
women and the children, weeping aloud over their dead. 
I turned and ran up the hill and told the sad news. ‘The 
family was at breakfast. When I said, ‘“The President is 
killed,” they all stood and said, ‘How? When?’ And 
I told them and my mother cried out as she did when Mar- 
shall died, and the children cried and my father looked 
sad and stern. He said, ‘“This is bad, very bad. It may 
mean a war of vengeance, and then the country is lost.”’ 
For the next seven days Abraham Lincoln was mourned 
as never mortal was mourned before, and by his martyr- 
dom he ascended to the rank of a saviour of mankind. 

From the first I did not like my employer, Mr. Blank, 
nor did he like me. He was unnecessarily bossy and I re- 
sented bossing; he was crooked in business and smutty in 
his talk. One day we had words together. He paid me 
my wages and told me to go and I went; and once more 
Algernon was in search of a job, but he did not have to 
look long nor go far. The Providence that shapes our 
ends had a job awaiting for him in the city of Washington 


DEAD LETTERS 53 


and another in New York and another in the wide, wide 
world. 

One day after a fruitless job-hunting in the city, I came 
home, tired and discouraged, and found my Uncle Franklin 
there. I was not particularly fond of my Uncle Franklin, 
so the sight of him did not bring me comfort. Little did 
I know that in a moment this despised uncle would be 
changed into a minister of fate, upon whose words would 
hang my future. When I went up and shook hands with 
him and said, ‘‘How do you do, Uncle?” Mother said, 
‘We were just talking about you.” ‘Talkin’ about me?” 
I said. ‘What have I done now?” Uncle Franklin was a 
preacher and I thought I was in for a sermon, and so I 
was, but not such a sermon as I looked for. My Uncle 
Franklin, speaking in his preacher voice, said, “‘Nephew, 
your mother tells me that you are just now out of employ- 
ment and I have asked her if she thought you would care 
to go to Washington and take my place in the Dead Letter 
Office for six months.” “Yes,” said my mother, “your 
uncle wants to be at home for six months to finish writing 
the life of your grandfather. He can only get his six 
months’ leave by furnishing a substitute; will you go?” 
Would I go! Would I go to Washington! What a fool- 
ish question! Of course I would go, and jump at the 
chance; and I went. To explain the situation, I must say 
that my uncle was not a successful preacher, and, being out 
of a pulpit, he had taken an appointment in the Dead Letter 
Office that he might have time to write the life of his 
father, Senator Morris, and also that he might be near the 
Congressional Library where he could consult his author- 
ities. 

Did you ever consider, dear reader, how fate dovetails 
events, how it plays with them on the checkerboard of life 
and so wins or loses for each of us our game? If my 
uncle hadn’t been a poor preacher and hadn’t given up the 


54. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


pulpit that he might write a dull book, for it is the dullest 
ever, I might never have gone to Washington, nor gone 
to New York, nor become a poor preacher myself, and 
this book would never have been written. 

In a week my clothing was cleaned, my socks were darned. 
I kissed my mother good-bye, hugged my sisters, and with 
my carpetbag in my hand, left the home of my childhood, 
never to return except as a visitor. I took the afternoon 
train on the Baltimore and Ohio Railway, sleeping in my 
seat in the day coach through the night, in the morning 
eating the breakfast of sandwiches, cold boiled eggs and 
cake which my mother had put up for me, gazing out of 
the window all day as we ran through Virginia to Balti- 
more, and through Maryland to Washington; reaching 
the Capital of the Nation in the late afternoon. 

I went at once to the boarding-house to which my Uncle 
Franklin had directed me, was shown to his room, which 
was to be mine for the six months of my stay. ‘The next 
morning at nine o’clock I was in my Uncle’s seat in the 
Dead Letter Office, duly installed as the temporary servant 
of my Uncle Samuel. ‘This new uncle was not a hard task- 
master. He required us to be on our job at nine o'clock 
in the morning with half hour’s grace—there weren't time 
clocks in those days—we were expected to work until 
twelve, when we had a noon hour, with fifteen minutes’ 
grace; then we were on duty until four, beginning at half 
past three to get ready; we were all out on the street at 
the hour of dismissal. Our time of actual work averaged 
five hours, much of which was spent in fierce political dis- 
cussion. 

The great fight between the Congress and the President 
was then raging. ‘The men in the office were fierce against 
President Johnson. ‘They were for the most part sorry 
specimens of our sorry humanity, broken-down political 
hacks from every part of the country: fat men from 


DEAD LETTERS 55 


Gotham; lean men from Hoosierdom. There they sat, 
their jaws working faster than their hands as they 
“chawed” their tobacco. I can see one of them now, a 
long lean Hoosier, with a goatee that went up and down 
as his jaws worked, grinding the juice out of his plug to- 
bacco, squirting this juice on the floor in a vain attempt to 
reach the spittoon, and voiding his vile venom on the name 
of the President. The man made me sick and mad, 
and at last I broke out and asked how he dared to so revile 
the President of the United States. He turned on me and 
cursed me with a picturesque profanity known only to the 
banks of the Wabash. I called him a brute and a traitor: 
was reported to the head of the department as disorderly 
and mildly rebuked. 

The Dead Letter Office is the morgue of defunct human 
correspondence. When a letter fails to reach its destina- 
tion, it is sent to the Dead Letter Office and opened. If 
there is in it nothing of importance, it is declared to be 
dead and sentenced to cremation. It was my duty to open 
such letters and see if they were alive or dead. I found 
ninety-five per cent of them so dead that they were offensive. 
There were in the most of them no sign that they had ever 
been alive with human thought or feeling. They were vain 
attempts on the part of unlettered men and women to con- 
vey their thoughts and feelings by means of letters. I was 
deeply grateful to my Uncle Samuel for giving me such short 
hours as a scavenger in these foul chambers of the dead. 

I found my compensation in viewing Washington and 
its environment. ‘The Washington of 1865 was not the 
Washington of 1924. It was then an unkempt country 
town; its streets unpaved country roads deep all the time 
with either mud or dust; mean houses straggled, unkemptly, 
with wide spaces between; foul Negro quarters disgraced 
the alleys between the streets. In the midst of this squalor 
was set the majestic Capitol, the White House, the Patent 


56 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 
Office, the Treasury Building and other buildings of purest 
marble and classic in form. 

Washington owes its redemption from that squalor to 
General Grant and “Boss” Shepard. Grant gave the com- 
mand; Shepard did the redeeming; he paved the streets, 
cleaned out, as far as he could, the alleys, tore down the 
meanest of the buildings and made it possible for Wash- 
ington to become what it now is, the most beautiful city 
of the world. I have visited nearly all the great cities 
of Europe; only three of them, Venice, Florence and Edin- 
burgh, are more fascinating than Washington. Washing- 
ton is a city of monuments; in almost every circle is a heroic 
figure of American history. For his work Shepard was 
sent into exile and Grant was smirched in reputation. It 
was said that Shepard stole a lot of money. I don't care 
how much he stole, he deserved it all. 

Even the old down-at-the-heels Washington of ’65 was 
of absorbing interest to me, the country round about it of 
immense educational value. 

I had one other experience which makes the remem- 
brance of Washington a holy room in my mansion of memo- 
ries. In the summer of my stay there an “‘all-star’’ com- 
pany of players came from New York to Washington and 
produced the great English comedies. My salary of a 
hundred dollars a month enabled me to enjoy this oppor- 
tunity to the full. I saw ‘““The School for Scandal,” ‘She 
Stoops to Conquer.’ I saw “The Merry Wives” and “The 
Merchant of Venice.” I saw “Money” and ‘‘Richelieu.” 
I saw “Lady Gay Spanker’ and “Bob Acres’; from two 
to four times a week I went to school to these masters of 
speaking and acting and what I learned from them is at 
the base of all my knowledge. 

All too soon my six months passed, my Uncle Franklin 
was back at his work, and I was once more face to face 
with fortune. 


CHAPTER XII 


THE TRAIL OF DESTINY 


, T the close of my engagement in Washington, as I 


was preparing to return to my home in Cincinnati, 

I encountered my Uncle, Isaac N. Morris, who 
was in the city on legal business. My uncle Isaac was a 
widely different man from my Uncle Franklin. He was 
a man of parts, physical and intellectual, had represented 
his district in the United States Congress and was a leading 
lawyer in the State of Illinois. At that time he had a 
case pending in the Supreme Court, which had called him 
to the capital of the Nation. 

When we met he asked me to go with him to his hotel. 
We went to his room, and when we were seated he said, 
“Well, Nephew, how have you enjoyed Washington?” 
I answered that I liked Washington very much; it was 
wonderfully interesting, especially the country roads in 
Virginia. He asked me about the Dead Letter Office. I 
said the Dead Letter Office was fun for me; the hours 
short, the work easy, but I did think my Uncle Franklin 
ought not to be there. Uncle Isaac said, ‘“Why not?” I 
said, “Why, you see, Uncle Isaac, Uncle Franklin is a 
preacher and a gentleman and most of the men in the Dead 
Letter Office are vile and vulgar. They chew tobacco all 
the time and spit on the floor; they use bad language and 
tell nasty stories.” “It hasn’t done you any harm,” said 
Diveunicic mie NO, Uncle, \lireplied: Tyhate: tobacco and 
can talk to myself so I don’t hear them. I have to be 


there only five hours a day and have nineteen hours to my- 
57 


58 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


self. But it’s different with Uncle Franklin; he just 
naturally hates the place. I think it will kill him”; and it 
did within the year. 

My Uncle Isaac agreed with me about my Uncle Franklin 
and said he would see what could be done, and then he 
asked what I was going to do. I said I didn’t know. I 
guessed I would have to go back home and get something 
to do in Cincinnati. My Uncle shook his head and said, 
‘‘Nephew, don’t do that. It’s a bad thing to go back; al- 
ways go forward. How much money have you?” I said, 
‘Nearly a hundred dollars.’ My uncle said, “That's 
good; don’t go back to Cincinnati. Go to New York. 
They keep telling young men to go West; it’s all wrong; 
New York is the centre of the life of the country. I am 
very sorry that I did not go to New York instead of going 
to Quincy. Quincy will never be anything but a small 
town. New York will be the largest city in the world. 
Go to New York, Nephew, go to New York”; and I went. 

The next morning I left Washington by the Pennsy]l- 
vania road and reached Jersey City at nine o’clock on the 
night of the same day. 

I have never forgotten the sensations of that arrival. 
I stepped out on the platform at Jersey City and I gazed 
in astonished admiration at the scene that lay before me. 
I thought I had surely come to the gates of the City of God. 
The river was alive with lighted craft of every form and 
size, moving up and down, across and back, seemingly in 
upper space, like angels on the wing. The shores of the 
river were lines of light, and in their shadow, dim forms 
of buildings entranced the eye, the spire of Trinity rising 
above them all, a point of darkness in the luminous sky. 
I went on the ferryboat and crossed the river, rapt in won- 
der at the magic city beyond. 

But, alas, at my first step from the boat, the magic city 
was gone in a flash and I was in noisy, dirty New York. 


THE TRAIL OF DESTINY 59 


I made my dangerous way over West Street to Dey Street, 
up Dey to Broadway, which was all alight, crowded with 
buses coming and going. I did not go to the Astor House, 
as I ought to have done, for I did not know that there was 
an Astor House. I strayed into a second-class hotel at 
the upper end of Chatham Street and went to bed, which 
I soon found to be possessed by permanent boarders who 
lived off the blood of the guests. Desiring to keep some 
of my blood for future use, I sat up in my chair waiting for 
the day, spending the long hours of the night damning my 
Uncle Isaac for advising me to come to such a vile place 
as New York. 

As soon as it was light I examined my clothing lest I 
should carry these bloodsuckers with me, washed my hands 
and face in dirty water, went to the office, paid a dollar for 
my lodging and went out to seek my fortune. I went into 
a restaurant in Park Row, had a breakfast of coffee, griddle 
cakes and sausage, then out again into the street, the lone- 
liest, forlornest human atom that was ever whirled about 
in that vast concourse of human atoms called New York. 
I crossed Broadway to the Astor House, now plain before 
my eyes, went up into the waiting-room and sat down, hav- 
ing all that I could do to keep from weeping aloud. 

As I sat there, I remembered that there was one person 
in all this multitude of persons whom I knew; he was a 
young man some three years older than I; his name was 
Giles, the son of the Reverend Chauncy Giles, a Sweden- 
borgian minister. This young man worked somewhere in 
the city. I looked him up in the directory, made inquiries 
and found him in his place of business. When he saw me 
he cried in amazement, ‘‘Why, Al Crapsey, where did you 
come from?” “I came from Washington.” ‘‘Where are 
you Teoiner  ) Lo find \worki mae Where cin Etere vin 
Mewrrnlonks |). VV no) isentr voummereri yn WLy uncle: 
“Well, your uncle was a fool; of all places in the world, 


60 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


New York is the last to come to if you are looking for 
work; the city 1s full of men looking for work.” So do 
different points of view give different opinions. 

But in spite of discouragement, in New York I was and 
in New York I must stay even if I starved, for I would not 
go back to Cincinnati and admit defeat. So, after talking 
the situation over with young Giles, we decided that the 
next step in my career was to find a boarding-house. I 
told him how much money I had, about eighty dollars. 
He said: ‘That won’t last long in New York, but perhaps 
you'll find a job before it’s all gone.” My friend recom- 
mended the neighbourhood of Madison Square as the best 
locality for boarding-houses. We took the Herald and 
turned to the advertisements of rooms to rent. There 
were columns upon columns of them; we selected a few in 
the region of Madison Square. I looked at the first adver- 
tisement in my hand and said: “Here is a room and 
board in Twenty-eighth Street,’ giving the number. “Is 
that’ all right?) es jheesaid, thatmwillydo;itakemne 
Broadway bus and get off at Twenty-eighth Street; that 
number is near Broadway.”’ I did as I was told; found the 
house and number, and rang the bell. The door was 
opened by a buxom blonde in her early thirties. I told my 
business, was shown a hall bedroom on the second floor 
front, which, with board, would cost me seven dollars a 
week. ‘The house seemed quiet and clean, the price reason- 
able. I put down my carpetbag and said, “I'll stay.” 

Here again my fate was leading me to my destiny. 
There were thousands of empty rooms in New York City; 
if I had not chosen this one as by hazard I would in all 
probability have been a business hack to this day. I went 
down to lunch, found it satisfactory, spent the afternoon 
looking about the neighbourhood and it also was satisfac- 
tory. At dinner when the boarders were all there, I was 
more than pleased with them and so went to bed feeling 


THE TRAIL OF DESTINY 61 


that I had made a safe landing in the city of New York. 

Then began the hunting of the job, and the hunting of 
the snark was nothing to it. I had a letter of introduction 
from a friend of my Uncle Isaac in Washington to a drug 
house in Dey Street. I was received with kindness, told 
that I had done well in coming to New York; then, with 
best wishes, was dismissed. Now I began in earnest the 
hunt for the job. I took in the Herald and applied by 
letter to every likely advertisement. I went down‘ to 
Whitehall Street and began a systematic search for my job 
day after day. I went into warehouse after warehouse, 
store after store, looking for my job, but my job was not 
there. A week passed into a fortnight and still my job 
eluded me; my money was wasting away, and when it was 
gone I was gone likewise. I went out at night and saw 
the men and women sitting on the benches of Madison 
Square and I shivered with fear; in a week or two that 
might be my only lodging, the raw air of the night my only 
covering, the crust of beggary my only food. During that 
period there was bred in my heart that deep pity for these 
outcasts of humanity which has been ever since a strong 
moral and intellectual influence in my life. They were not 
so much personal failures as they were the failures of 
civilization. 

Just as I had come to my last seven dollars, | was saved 
from the doom of the down-and-outs. One of my many 
letters was answered. I was asked to call at once at the 
printing-office of Sackett and Mackay, at the corner of Pine 
and William Streets. I was there in half an hour; the 
building was four stories; the office on the second floor. 
When I entered the office and gave my name to the boy in 
attendance, he conducted me to an inner office in which sat 
the head of the firm. After a short examination I was 
duly inducted into the responsible position of bookkeeper 
and cashier in the printing-house of Sackett and Mackay. 


62 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


This firm combined a stationery store on Nassau Street 
with their printing-house in William Street. Mr. Sackett 
was in charge of the printing-establishment, Mr. Mackay 
of the stationery store. This was fortunate for me, as 
Mr. Sackett came to love me while Mackay hated me as 
poison. It has always been so. My world has been made 
up of friends and enemies. I have never been the object 
of mere indifference. I have never been surprised at Mac- 
kay’s hatred, but Sackett’s love has been my wonder. He 
was\ to\wme)as (a father and “1 }to shim) as, \asonsee 
would watch over me and if I ran short of money in the 
middle of the week the safe was opened and five dollars 
was in my hand. I kept the books and ran the errands 
after a fashion, but that is all. ‘This job was not my 
real job—that was still waiting for me. 

When I had been on this job for a week or two, Mr. 
Sackett told me to take a package and carry it to such a 
number on Pearl Street. I had seen Pearl Street up on 
Broadway. I went up to Broadway till I came to Pearl; 
following its curve for more than half an hour. When I 
came to my number, I looked up and there I was within one 
minute’s walk from my starting-point. I said nothing to 
Mr. Sackett and he said nothing to me, only looked at me 
with a frown. In a few days I said, “Mr. Sackett, what’s 
the matter with Pearl Street?” He said, ‘“Why do you 
ask?’ I said, ‘“When you told me, the other day, to go to 
such a number on Pearl Street, I went up to Pearl Street on 
Broadway and began to walk and walk and when I came 
to the number I wanted, it was right down there.” Mr. 
Sackett laughed and he said, “That is why you were so 
long doing that errand—TI thought it strange.” ‘‘Yes,” 
I said, “that was the reason’’; and he said, ‘‘Pearl Street 
is an old cowpath from the ancient village of New Amster- 
dam to the cow pastures. The Dutchmen gradually built 
their houses along the path and you have the crookedest 


THE TRAIL OF DESTINY 63 


street in the world.” I laughed and said, ‘‘Are there other 
crooked streets in the city?’ He said, ‘“‘Plenty.”’ I said, 
“The next time you tell me to go anywhere, I will ask 
you how to get there.” He said, “‘Correct, my lad; always 
ask when you don’t know; it is a good rule.” 

It was nearly four miles from my boarding-house to my 
ofice and I usually took the horse car in the morning. 
It was an hour’s ride at the best and might be an hour 
and a half or two hours. I started at about six so as tobe 
sure of reaching the office at eight. I used this otherwise 
waste time in reading. J remember one morning in the car 
I was reading Gibbon’s ‘“‘Decline and Fall of the Roman 
Empire.” A fine-looking man who was sitting next to me 
took the book from my hand, looked at it, handed it back, 
saying, “Young man, if you keep up such reading as this, 
you will amount to something in the world.” I said, 
“Thank you, sir; I am reading to pass the time.” The 
stranger said, ‘“‘Yes, I see. You read for the love of read- 
ing; that shows the bent of your mind. We shall hear 
from you in the future.” My heart glowed at this word 
of approval. How must the New Yorker of to-day laugh at 
this story! ‘This Crapsey fellow,” he will say, ‘‘is the 
champion liar, reading a book in the street car. Weren't 
there any newspapers in those old days, and how did he 
hang on his strap?” It does seem ridiculous, but it is true. 

This reading, however, had its drawback; it might be 
preparing me for future importance, but it was a decided 
hindrance to my present work. When [I should have been 
concentrating my attention on the column of figures before 
me, I was standing with Constantine on Malvian Bridge 
on that fatal day, when he saw in the midday sky the 
flaming Cross, underneath which were written the words, 
“By this Conquer.” When walking about the streets I 
often went by my destination, following in my thought the 
flight of the Moors as Charles Martel, the Hammerer, 


64 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


drove them from the field of Tours and so saved Europe 
for Christianity. One day when lost in such a vision of 
the past, when I was listening to the shrieks of the Picts 
and Scots as the legions of Agricola were slaughtering them 
in the Cheviot Hills, Mr. Mackay came on me as I was 
standing at gaze, seeing nothing, and he cursed me for an 
idle fool. ‘“‘Damn you,” he said, ‘‘what are you standing 
here for? I can’t see why Sackett keeps such a lazy loon 
as you about the place. If I'd had my way, you'd been 
sacked long ago.” 

At this rebuke, I came out of my waking dream with a 
start, went up to my work, resolving never to read another 
page of Gibbon. But, alas, habit is habit and the reading 
went on. Fortunately, my affairs so shaped themselves 
that I was able to reconcile my reading with my duty. 


CHAPTER XIII 


THE CALL TO PREACH 


‘ NY large city is a dangerous place for a young man 


loose on the world. Strange women on the streets 

offer themselves at a price for the gratification 
of his strongest passion. In the seventies there was no 
police interference, to speak of, with this traffic of women. 
As soon as it is dark these outcasts were parading, offering 
to sell their love to anyone who would buy. That I did 
not fall into this pit of destruction was owing to my 
timidity and my poverty. I had neither the courage nor 
the money to enter upon such a vicious course. ‘The 
daughter of my landlady was a temptation, not to coarse 
vice, but to destructive marriage. She was the sister of 
the buxom blonde who opened the door for me when I 
came looking for a room. In my loneliness I kept com- 
pany with this girl and was drifting into a situation that 
would have resulted in marriage. There would have been 
no harm in this had my lot lain along the lower level of 
business life, but for me it would have been fatal. I was 
unfit for that lower level of business life, where she would 
have held me. I should never have been able to earn a 
decent living with such companionship. I shudder to think 
Oipit. 

Nature saved me from this disaster by the homeopathic 
method. She cured me of women by woman. ‘There was 
in my boarding-house a woman, my senior by twelve years, 
who rescued me from this danger. She was an Irish wo-: 


man, with all the vivacity and wit of her race. She was a 
65 


66 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


music-teacher by profession, a pianist of rare power with 
a singing voice strong and melodious. As the name of 
this woman belongs to a sacred past, that past shall cover 
it. I shall call her my Mary. We had been in the house 
together more than two months before she so much as 
took notice of me. I was a hall-roomer, while Mary with 
a friend occupied one of the largest, best-furnished rooms 
in the house. In the boarding-house social ranks are main- 
tained as strictly as in the outer world. ‘The hall-roomers 
may sit up with the landlady’s daughter but not with 
her high-and-mightiness who sleeps in the chambre de luxe 
on the second floor front. It was the landlady who 
brought us together. She told my Mary what a nice young 
man I was, what a fine talker And my Mary sniffed. 
But for all that, her curiosity was aroused and she stopped 
one evening and engaged me in conversation. We were 
mutually attracted. She was vivacious and I was not 
stupid. She spoke to me the next night and the next, and 
then to my joy she invited me to her room and I was 
lost; without knowing it, I was in my first passion—that 
most delightful of all passions, the passion of a youth 
for an older woman. For some reason which I could never 
fathom, my landlady moved me from my hall bedroom to 
the hall bedroom next to the chamber of my Mary. 
When I came home and found myself transferred in this 
unauthorized way, I was very angry. I did not want my 
Mary, by any chance, to see my broken shoes and shabby 
clothing. When I stormed at the landlady’s elder daugh- 
ter, the buxom blonde, she said, ‘‘We had a chance to rent 
your room with the next room to a family, and what 
kick have you comin’ anyhow ?—ain’t you right next to your 
Mary?’ Then I blushed and was more angry than ever 
to think that my sacred passion was boarding-house gos- 
sip. The next day I went looking for another room, but 
could not find one to my liking. I was soon reconciled to 





THE CALL TO PREACH 67 


my new situation, took care to hide my broken boots and 
shabby clothing, used my own room only for sleeping and 
spent my evenings in my Mary’s chamber, chaperoned by 
her friend, Mrs. P When Christmas came I bought 
a plush prayer-book, a shabby thing enough, and gave it as 
a Christmas gift to my Mary. She came in my room and 
kissed me on my forehead, and I went out and walked the 
streets in an ecstasy of painful joy. 

With this began our intimacy—an intimacy that might 
have been dangerous but for the prudence of my Mary. She 
was passionate but prudent, very prudent. She had just 
lost a lover and I guess that is why she lost him, and I 
filled the void in her heart. Such relationships are not 
uncommon and they are an education. From this time until 
I left the city my Mary and I were together when we could 
be together. ‘There was never any scandal, for I was only 
a boy and Mary a woman in her thirties, and besides, Mary 
was very prudent and, in her way, religious. She had been 
a Catholic, but was then a member of Christ Episcopal 
Church on Fifth Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street, and as a 
matter of course I went with my Mary to church and car- 
ried her prayer-book. 

Christ Church was just then the storm centre of a fierce 
religious controversy. Its rector was Ferdinand Cart- 
wright Ewer—one of the brilliant preachers of the day. 
He was born on Martha’s Vineyard, was graduated with 
distinction at Harvard, and was a disciple of Voltaire and 
Tom Paine. After his graduation he went to San Fran- 
cisco and engaged in newspaper work. ‘There he was 
converted to the Christian faith and became a minister 
in the Episcopal Church. After leaving a church in San 
Francisco, he accepted a call as assistant to Doctor Gal- 
laudet at St. Ann’s Church, New York, which church ad- 
ministered especially to deaf-mutes. Mr. Ewer preached to 
these unfortunates most eloquently with his fingers, but 





68 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 
he preached still more eloquently with his musical baritone 
voice to the hearing ear. 

Doctor Ewer was a born preacher. ‘Tall, slender, dark, 
with full beard, which grew down to his breast, he was the 
very picture of a Hebrew prophet; standing in his chancel 
in his cassock (he generally preached in his cassock), his 
figure captured the imagination and his voice was as the 
voice of a messenger of God. I have heard many 
preachers, but none more appealing to the emotions than 
Ferdinand Cartwright Ewer. 

When I first sat under him, Doctor Ewer was of the 
Broad Church school, but he was soon converted to the 
Anglo-Catholic conception of Christ, and the Church; he 
became a fierce Puseyite. He roused the religious world 
of America by a course of sermons on “The Failure of 
Protestantism.”’ His church, well filled before, was now 
crowded to suffocation. 

I listened to his unfolding of his doctrine of the church 
as the Ark of Salvation with avid ears. The Church that 
Doctor Ewer preached was not the Church of the Cata- 
combs; it was the Church of the Cathedrals. Doctor Ewer 
was swept along in that revival of medievalism which 
found its expression in the novels of Scott, in the poems 
of Keble, in the teaching of Pusey and the preaching of 
Newman. ‘That movement was a reaction from the bald- 
ness of Protestantism and the crassness of rationalism. It 
revived Gothic architecture and Catholic symbolism. It 
made captive such men as Gladstone and Hope; it revived 
dead Anglicanism and made the English Church once more 
a living Church. Its ministers became priests, its devout 
women, nuns. 

I was just of the age and temperament to be carried 
away by the preaching of Doctor Ewer. I became his ar- 
dent disciple; he lifted me up on the winds of his eloquence 
and carried me back into the ages of faith; he made me 


THE CALL TO PREACH 69 


to fast with Saint Chad and to hear Saint Swithin’s bells. 
I felt within myself the call to preach the Gospel that 
Ewer preached. I was baptized by him, my witnesses 
being my Mary and his assistant, the Reverend Mr. Dun- 
ham, of whom we shall hear again. At the next visitation 
of the Bishop I was confirmed and on the following Sunday 
received my first communion. 

I was now utterly useless as a bookkeeper. I was in 
the grip of the grey man of my boyhood, who was leading 
me by the hand to my rightful work in the world. I went 
to Doctor Ewer and told him of my desire to study for 
the ministry; he gave kindly attention to my request and 
told me that I had best go to St. Stephen’s College, at 
Annandale on the Hudson. ‘That college has a special 
course for young men,” he said, “who, like you, come from 
the business world and at more mature age enter the min- 
istry.’ Doctor Ewer told me that such men were aided 
during their courses of study from the funds of a society 
known as the New York Society for the Promotion of 
Religion and Learning, of which Doctor McVickar, of 
Columbia College, was the president. Now, Doctor 
McVickar was a great man and scholar in his day and 
generation. There was a good story current in Columbia 
of the worthy Doctor and the doctorate. Speaking to his 
class one day, the Doctor said, ‘“‘Gentlemen, there are some 
men who honour the doctorate and some men whom the 
doctorate honours. If a man honours the doctorate you 
never give him the title. You never say Doctor Johnson; 
you say Johnson; but if the doctorate honours the man, be 
careful to give him the title.” Instantly a saucy student 
rose up and cried, ““McVickar, may I be excused?’ and the 
Doctor rose with all his stateliness and bowed and said, 
“Certainly,” and the class roared with laughter and the 
laugh was on the Doctor. 

It was to this stately man that Doctor Ewer gave me 


70 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


a letter of introduction. When I called to see him at 
his house, I was told that I might wait for him in the hall 
as he was expected home in a few minutes. As I sat 
waiting, I could not but overhear the conversation of his 
two stately daughters who, on the floor above, were dis- 
cussing the arrangement of the house for coming guests. 
When at last guests and rooms were duly apportioned, 
one sister said to the other sister, ‘‘Now, where shall we 
put Father?’ And the answer came with brutal quick- 
ness, “Oh, we can put Father anywhere.” Thus did I 
learn that nearness dispels greatness; that Bishop Proudie 
is only a poor weak man to Mrs. Proudie, and King George 
puts off his kingship when he puts on his night-cap. 

When he came in the Doctor took my letter and told 
me to call again. To my surprise the great Doctor, like 
Zaccheus, was short of stature, a man whom his robust 
daughters could tuck in any corner they chose. 

In due time I called on the Doctor again and he could 
not see me. I called and called till he did see me and 
found him a very gracious gentleman. He asked my par- 
don for the trouble he had given me. He told me at 
its last meeting the Society for the Promotion of Religion 
and Learning had given me a scholarship for, I think it was, 
three hundred dollars, sufficient to pay my tuition and board 
at St. Stephen’s College, Annandale. As he handed me my 
scholarship and a letter to the warden of the college he said 
with a smile, “I trust, Mr. Crapsey, you will show the 
same zeal in the service of the Church that you have mani- 
fested in your determination to get the scholarship.” I 
thanked him and said, “I will try, sir.” 

When I told Mr. Sackett that I must leave his employ 
and that I was going to college to study for the ministry, 
he smiled sweetly and said, ‘Well, my boy, I’m sorry to 
lose you; but I guess it’s best for you and best for me. 
You will never make a good business man and you may 


THE CALL TO PREACH ai 


make a good preacher, while if I keep you much longer 
I will have to dissolve partnership with Mackay, and, tak- 
ing all things together, I think the business will get along 
better without you than it can without Mackay.” And I 
said, “I am sure it can, Mr. Sackett, and I want you to 
know how grateful I am to you for all your kindness to 
me.’”’ He said, patting me on the head, ‘‘My boy, I have 
been very fond of you. I saw there was good stuff in you, 
but too booky for business; a bookkeeper needs know only 
three books, his day-book, his journal and his ledger, and 
they were about the only books that you didn’t care for.” 
I blushed with shame and sorrow, and he said, ‘“‘Never 
mind, laddie, when you’re a preacher you'll have an easy 
time. You can button your collar behind and you needn't 
WeatuayShirt,(: 

So I left Elisha Sackett with his blessing, and I have 
blessed him all the days of my life. 


CHAPTER XIV 


COLLEGE LIFE 


()* the first Monday in September, 1868, I bade 


farewell to my friends in my boarding-house, 

turned my back upon the secular world of business 
and pleasure, and entered upon my preparation for the 
work of a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. The 
opening scene of this preparation was Annandale-on- 
Hudson, the site of St. Stephen’s College. This institution 
was of recent foundation; it owed its existence to one John 
Bard, upon whose estate it was situated. Like all great 
things, its beginnings were humble, as I discovered on the 
day of my arrival at this seat of learning. 

My directions were to take the morning train from New 
York and leave the train at a station called Barrytown. 
It was a slow train, stopping at every station, so that, leav- 
ing New York at nine, we did not get to Barrytown until 
nearly one. When I alighted from the train at Barrytown 
I looked about for St. Stephen’s College, but there was no 
college to be seen, only steep cliffs running up from the 
riverside and wooded hills above. Sorely perplexed, I 
asked the station-master the way to St. Stephen’s College. 
The man looked at me in a puzzled way for a moment, and 
then he said, “Oh, I guess you mean ‘Bard’s Skule’; take 
the road up the hill till you come to Annandale, then 
take the left-hand road and you'll come to the skule, a red- 
brick buildin’ on the hill and a stone church in the holler.” 
This direction puzzled me, but before I could ask further 
questions the station-master went up the track to look after 


some express. 
72 


COLLEGE LIFE 73 


I, with my bag and travelling-case in my hand, began to 
climb the hill, saying to myself, ‘‘‘Bard’s Skule.’ ‘Bard’s 
Skule’; whatever did that man mean by talking about 
‘Bard’s Skule’?”’ I learned afterward that ‘‘Bard’s Skule”’ 
was to St. Stephen’s College as the seed to the plant; it was 
in the “Skule” that the college had its origin; which 
was on this wise. I was at that moment walking through 
the estate of John Bard; the road was a public road, but 
the land was John Bard’s land on either side. The man 
himself lived in a mansion in his manor at the top of the 
hill. As his name makes manifest, John Bard was by blood 
an Englishman, by accident an American. He was a typi- 
cal squire and as a matter of birth was a member of the 
Fstablished Church; it is true that there was no Established 
Church in America, but a daughter of that ancient mother 
carried on the life and traditions of the family in the new 
country. This Church was known in law as the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, 
which would have been called the English Church in Amer- 
ica, but the successful revolt of the American Colonies 
against the British Crown made that impossible. This 
Church centres its life in its bishops; it’s from bishop to 
bishop that the power of God descends through Christ 
and Peter and all the Apostles to rule Holy Church. 
Without the bishop there can be no Church. Such was the 
English Church, with its cathedrals and bishops’ palaces. 
The American bishops derived their orders from the Eng- 
lish bishop, and so were the custodians and rulers of the 
only true Church in America. As the English squires and 
lords of the land were the natural patrons of the English 
Church, so were the American squires and landholders and 
rich merchants of English descent the natural members 
and patrons of the Episcopal Church. John Bard was of 
English descent, a large landholder and a man of wealth 
and per consequens a member of the Episcopal Church. 


74 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


He was, moreover, a liberal patron of that Church. He 
had built upon his estate a beautiful Gothic church free 
to the neighbourhood, of which, at the time of its opening 
or soon after, he appointed the Reverend George F. Sey- 
mour to the rectorship. Mr. Seymour, afterward Doctor 
Seymour, Professor of History in the General Theological 
Seminary, and later Bishop of Quincy, Illinois, made use 
of his leisure time in teaching young men, whom he received 
into his home, Latin and Greek and mathematics, prepara- 
tory to their entering the theological seminary to study 
for the sacred ministry of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, these young men coming from business life at 
an age which forbade their taking a full collegiate course. 
As these students increased in number, Mr. Seymour sug- 
gested to his patron, Mr. Bard, the foundation of a college 
to carry on this work of preparing business and profes- 
sional men for entrance into the study of theology. Mr. 
Bard received this suggestion with enthusiasm, interested 
various of his friends, secured a charter from the State, 
and so brought into being St. Stephen’s College. 

But long before this college was so much as thought 
of, Mr. Bard, in true English fashion, had established a 
parish school for the children of his estate and the neigh- 
bouring village—of this the rector of the parish, and after 
its foundation the warden of the college, was the superin- 
tendent. Now this school was known throughout the coun- 
try-side as ‘“Bard’s Skule,” and when the college was built 
the whole plant was known as “Bard’s Skule.”’ 

As I took the winding road up the hill to Bard’s School, 
I forgot my journey’s end in the intense enjoyment of the 
journey itself. The road wound up a hill and on either 
side of the road was a virgin forest of indigenous trees. 
Mr. Bard, as a true English gentleman, loved his trees, 
and there they stood as they had been standing for a 
hundred years and more, ancient elm and maple, spruce 


COLLEGE LIFE 75 


and pine. The great economic sin of America has been the 
wanton destruction of the forest; of that sin Mr. Bard 
was guiltless; he cut away dead trees and branches for his 
fire-wood, but this was not to destroy; it was to preserve 
the forest. 

As I made my way up the hill I had glimpses of the 
waters of the Hudson River dancing in the sunlight and 
of vague shadows in the Western sky—all motionless as 
mountains; and mountains they were. The whole scene 
was that of veiled beauty seducing the soul with desire for 
the lifting of the veil, that the hidden beauties might be 
uncovered to the gaze. When I came to the top of the 
hill, to the village of Annandale, I turned to the North, 
as directed, and walked along the ridge of the hills above 
the trees, and the hidden beauties were revealed and I fell 
in love with them. There lay open to my gaze the Hudson 
River from Kingston to Catskill, the wavelets of the river 
breaking into crests of golden light; the broad bosom of 
the river carried with ease steamer, yacht and rowboat, the 
traffic and pleasure of a continent of which this river was 
the servant. Beyond the river the Catskill range of moun- 
tains lay at ease against the sky, resting its feet upon the 
foothills, looking down with indifference upon the pygmy 
hamlets and towns which the pygmy man had built to 
shelter him from the wrath of the mountain. [I have seen 
the White and the Green Mountains; I have seen the Alps 
and the Apennines; all these I have admired, but the Cat- 
skill range is my first and only love. I have seen her com- 
ing out of the clouds of the morning, as a housewife ready 
for her tasks. I have seen her glowing under the noonday 
heat. I have seen her at eventide, lying in languorous 
ease waiting for the night, that she may conceive and bring 
forth the children of the wood. 

But now I hear my impatient reader cry, why is this boy 
loitering along the road; why doesn’t he get on to school? 


76 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


Patience, dear reader, patience. Did you ever know a boy 
that did not loiter on his way to school? And I was only 
a boy; scared out of his wits as he looked up and saw 
“Bard’s Skule” on the hill-side. 

As I stood gazing at that prison-like structure, I was 
startled out of my dream of love and terror by the opening 
of a gate near at hand. I lifted up my eyes and saw a 
man coming out of the gate. He looked at me and I 
looked at him. I do not know what he saw, but before 
me was a short, stout figure, with sandy hair and shaggy 
eyebrows; underneath the brows were light blue eyes, be- 
tween the eyes a short nose; under the nose a wide mouth, 
an iron jaw, a rounded chin. He was clothed in black, his 
collar was buttoned behind, and his waistcoat, which the vul- 
gar call a vest, was buttoned close to his collar; if he wore a 
shirt, it was a useless waste; he didn’t need it. As I looked 
at him I thought of Elisha Sackett and his prophecy. But 
he soon scared me out of all idle thinking; in a voice with 
ayrich burr yhessaidae.Who tare; you fy Ub)said qmanaean 
Crapsey.” ‘Where are you going?’ “I am going to 
st.* Stephen's College.) @* "Who. ‘sent ‘you?’ 4) Bectas 
MeVickar.” Puff! “Id like to know what right McVic- 
kar has to send a man up here without letting me know.” 
‘Fle told me he would write of my coming.” ‘Well, he 
didn’t—the college is full, There’s no room for you.” 
At this I had a mixed feeling of joy and sorrow; joy at the 
thought that I needn’t go to “‘Bard’s Skule’—sorrow at 
the realization that I had nowhere else to go. As I turned 
away to seek my fortune once more in the wide, wide world 
the burring voice cried, “Stop!” I stopped. ‘Go up to 
the college; I will see what I can do.” I obeyed; went up 
to the college; the little Scotchman found room for me, and 
he and I made friends together. 

This irascible gentleman was none other than the 
Reverend Doctor Robert Brinkerhof Fairbairn, warden of 


COLLEGE LIFE "7 


St. Stephen’s College. When I came to know him I found 
that his bark was worse than his bite. In addition to his 
duties as warden, he occupied the chair of logic and philoso- 
phy in the college. As I took the prize in Logic and 
honourable mention in philosophy, you may be sure that we 
got on together. As for him, he was my unending delight; 
he had a habit in class of plucking out the hairs of his 
shaggy eyebrows, which fascinated me. I would keep 
count of these pluckings and wonder when his eyes would 
be naked of brows. 

On this first day of the college the fellows were return- 
ing from their vacation and the newcomer was a natural 
object of curiosity. As they came in, they crowded around 
me like boys in front of a monkey cage and put me 
through the third degree. ‘‘What’s your name?” ‘‘Crap- 
Seyae nV nats yy the handles) \*Aleernon) Sidney: 
“Whew, some handle! Where did you come from?” 
eiNowe . OLKs) bee Whatyschooll?’’’ 4 ''No school.) osWhat 


were you doin’ before you came?’ ‘‘Keeping books.” 


Then, with scorn, “You’re only a Prep.” “I don’ know. 
Winer svat ren youn V).ell,ayou are) preensia  breny ain't 
college.’ I must explain this conundrum by saying that 


the warden, Doctor Fairbairn, had made St. Stephen’s a 
college with its four years’ course, freshman, sophomore, 
junior and senior, just like Harvard or Yale. But, not 
to do away entirely with the original purpose of the insti- 
tution, he had condescended to continue a course of two 
years, preparatory to the theological seminary; this for 
such poor creatures as I who had neither the time nor 
the money for the full academic education. But such 
poverty was held in contempt, as poverty always is, and 
a Prep. was a low caste in the midst of the Brahmins of 
the school. The warden shared the contempt of the 
students for the Prep. As a consequence, the Preps. were 
few in number; only two entered in ’67, Harry Wayne 


78 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


and myself. Wayne was the son of General Harry Wayne 
of Confederate Army fame, and grandson of Justice Wayne 
of the United States Supreme Court. ‘This social éclat 
lifted him out of the ignominy of Prepdom, but I, the 
son of an unknown man, had no such deliverance from my 
low estate. 

My condition was the more contemptuous because of 
utter ignorance of academic lore. Could I read Greek? 
“No.” Latin? “No.” », How far had I gone in mathe= 
matics? ‘“‘Up to interest and percentage.’’ ‘‘Humph, 
that’s not mathematics, that’s arithmetic. Know anything 
of jalzebrat) se No nh a) Of gcometry? iv VINO. Tania yarn 
in the world did you come to college?” “Because Doctor 
McVickar sent me.” “Did McVickar know how little 
you know?” “I don’t know.” ‘It seems to me you don’t 
know anything. We will have to place you in a junior 
Prep. class all by yourself.’’ So I sank to the lowest 
station of scholastic life. I was not only a Prep., I was a 
junior Prep.; worse still, my first recitations were dismal 
failures. JI had no power of concentration. It seemed as 
if I would be thrown out of the college as a fool, and 
I went into the woods and wept. Then I shut myself up 
in my room, mastered my task and began to make perfect 
recitations. And soon it was discovered that I was not 
such a ninny as I seemed. When it came to history, I 
made a recitation that was commended by the professor 
and applauded by the class. As by a miracle, I was saved 
from the doom of utter failure, and, as I have already 
informed the reader, came out a prize man. 

Under the guidance of Doctor Oliver, I made reason- 
able progress in Greek and before I left college could read 
it with ease, so much that when I graduated from the 
seminary the first job offered me was a tutorship in Greek 
in the college at Fairabau, Minnesota, which I declined. 
My success with Greek was altogether owing to the method 


COLLEGE LIFE 79 


of the professor; he taught Greek as every language should 
be taught—language first and grammar afterward. The 
value of the letter was given, so that the combination of 
letters into words was natural; the combined sounds of the 
letters made the word. Then the meaning of the word 
was given in its English equivalent; then the words were 
formed into sentences and the sentences into paragraphs. 
Before one knew what one was about, one was reading 
Greek. I was not so fortunate with Latin. Under the 
guidance of Dr. Hopson, I learned the grammar, but not 
the language. In later years I learned to read Latin by 
reading it. 

I soon discovered, however, and the college discovered, 
that I had a knowledge not possessed by my fellow students 
and hardly by my professors. I was possessed at first 
hand of historical lore and philosophical thought from the 
masters. In history I had sat at the feet of Gibbon and 
Hume, Robertson and Macaulay, Macintosh and Prescott, 
Ranke and Thiers. I had gone to the wellsprings of phi- 
losophy and drunk wisdom from Hume and Berkeley, But- 
ler and Malbranche. In the science of human passion, my 
teachers had been Shakespeare and Scott, Fielding and 
Richardson, Sterne and Smollett, and, above all, Goldsmith. 
In modern thought, my masters were Carlyle, Ruskin and 
Emerson. 

There was in our college a literary society called ‘“The 
Eulexian,”’ in which certain meetings were set apart for the 
reading of anonymous papers. When I had been in col- 
lege some months I was appointed reader, and I read a 
paper of my own based on the saying of Francesco in the 
first scene of the first act of ‘“‘Hamlet’’: ‘‘For this relief, 
much thanks. ’Tis bitter cold and I am sick at heart.” 
I showed how in these words the poet had given expression 
to the bitterness of his own soul; he had carved them on 
the base of the noblest product of his genius, that men 


80 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


might know the bitter ironies of human life. Here was 
the grandest intellect and heart of his own or any time able 
to gauge the minds of kings, unravel the secrets of the 
soul, and yet himself a mere strolling player, a motley to 
the view, subject to the proud man’s contumely; scorned 
by the priests and patronized by the snobs. I have since 
preached this as a sermon and it is a great sermon; an- 
other paper on Shakespeare and an essay on Mirabeau gave 
me my place in the college. I was no more a despised 
Prep. I was a college man, a member of no class but of 
all classes. You ask me why I boast of this? I answer, 
“If I did not, who would?” 

St. Stephen’s College, being a small college, could not be 
expected to produce a man of great genius, but it did in- 
clude in its body many interesting men and one of com- 
manding intellectual ability; this was James Stryker, who 
graduated at the head of his class and of the college in 
the year 1867. I have listened to many men since then, but 
none in my judgment superior to Stryker. I can see and 
hear him now standing with his college gown wrapped 
about him, in words simple and lucid, unravelling the per- 
plexities of Sir William Hamilton and making plain the 
obscurities of Dugald Stewart. 

Among the interesting men of the college were Foster, 
the contradiction; Thomas, the gentleman; Houghton, the 
enthusiast; Toy, the midget; Cole, the poet. As I think 
of these men, I marvel at the waste of nature. Stryker 
stayed on in the college as instructor in mathematics and 
died within the year; Foster became a Roman Catholic, 
renouncing the English Church as heretical, left the Roman 
Church an Agnostic; studied medicine, became a successful 
practitioner and died on the street; Houghton, a pastor 
without peer, died in his prime as Rector of St. Mark’s, 
Denver, Colorado; Thomas, the gentleman, was the pastor 
of John Pierpont Morgan the elder, and died in the odour 


COLLEGE LIFE SI 


of respectability. When a man reaches the age of seventy- 
seven he can but cry the death of his friends and say 
to his lonely soul, ‘““And I only am escaped alone to 
follptice:) 

The two years of my college course passed quickly into 
the abysm of the past and my college days were over. I 
did not graduate; a Prep. never does. The only notable 
thing I did in college was to lay the foundation of the 
society called Kappa Gamma Chi—the mystical meaning 
of these cabalistic words I dare not tell; I only know that 
there was a fight in the Eulexian; some of us seceded and 
we said, “Go to—let us found a rival society.” I said, 
“Tf we do, let’s make it a secret society and give an annual 
gunners then vit willtbera, go." Jim. Stryker gaveius the 
name. We gave the dinner, and lo and behold, the Kappa 
Gamma Chi became an institution with its Chapter House, 
and on its roll of honoured members are bishops and clergy 
without limit. 

At last the hour came; I ascended the platform, pro- 
nounced my oration on ‘““The Great Idealist,” ate the com- 
mencement dinner, said good-bye with tearful eyes to the 
boys, and went to Barrytown, and so on to New York. 


CHAPTER XV 


THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY 


T the conclusion of my college course I went di- 

vay rectly to a mining town in the coal region of Penn- 

sylvania, the name of which I have forgotten, but 

which I will call Mahoney, where I had an engagement to 
teach a parish school for the summer. 

I lived, if I remember correctly, in the village hotel and 
my school was in the parish house. The rector of the 
parish was a Mr. Washburn whose son, Louis Washburn, 
was for many years rector of St. Paul’s Church, Rochester, 
and is now the distinguished and beloved rector of Christ 
Church, Philadelphia. There are only two incidents in 
this period of my career that call for remark. The first 
of these incidents shows the inaptitude of the child mind 
for abstract propositions. I was endeavouring to convey 
to the minds of a class of boys and girls of the average age 
of twelve the abstract conception of a fraction. I told 
them that a fraction was a definite part of a whole. Il 
might as well have said to them that a fraction was a jab- 
berwock; my words, I soon saw, conveyed to their minds 
no notion whatever. So at last, to illustrate the concep- 
tion, I took an apple, cut it into parts and, first holding the 
apple as a whole before the class, I said, ‘Children, what 
is this?’ They shouted, ‘An apple.” Then, taking a 
piece of the apple and holding it up, I said, ‘‘And what is 
this?’ And with a louder shout they cried, ‘‘A piece of 
apple, sir.’ After years of experience in teaching, I am 


convinced that the average child cannot entertain an ab- 
82 


THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY 83 


stract proposition before the age of sixteen and a large 
_ minority never acquire the power of abstraction at all. 
It is this psychological fact that has given such wide popu- 
larity to the movies and the Sunday supplements. 

The second incident worthy of remark during my resi- 
dence in Mahoney had to do with the power of Holy 
Church to subdue the unruly passions of sinful men. The 
majority of the mining population of Mahoney were from 
the Emerald Isle. Every Sunday morning, before the few 
Protestants were out of bed, could be heard the ‘‘tramp, 
tramp, tramp” of these Irish Catholics on their way to and 
from their attendance at the Mass. I used to get up and 
go to the window and watch these pious people, men in 
their high hats, women with their covered heads, in their 
green kirtles; a decenter lot of people never presented 
themselves before their God for his loving approval; the 
few Protestants who later in the morning went to their 
Bethels and Ebenezers were not to be compared with these 
devotees of the true Church. So the Sabbath morning 
passed in holy calm. 

But in the afternoon, presto change! the Main Street was 
thronged with Irishmen howling drunk and fighting mad. 
The Irish God was invoked, not to bless, but to damn. 
All along the street fists were striking; stones were flying; 
women, no longer in sober grey and green, but dressed in 
flaming reds and glaring yellows, stood along the side 
of the street applauding the prowess of their men, and if 
any woman’s man seemed to be getting the worst of it, in 
she would go, biting and scratching and yelling like a wild- 
cat. What with the cursing of the men, the screeching of 
the women, the crying of the children and the barking 
of the dogs, it was pandemonium let loose in the streets of 
Mahoney on a Sunday. God had the morning, but the 
Devil owned the town in the afternoon. But stop; God 
was waiting to whip the Devil round the stump. When 


84 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the pandemonium was at its raging crest and the waves of 
wrath submerging the reason of fighters, then look and 
see: behold, a black figure on a black horse came riding 
into the turmoil, whip in hand. He slashed to the right 
and to the left; the fighting ceased, the fighters fled away 
and Sabbath stillness settled once more upon the streets of 
Mahoney. Holy Church, in the person of the holy Father, 
had subdued the unruly passions of sinful men till come 
next Sunday. For so it happened on every Sunday while I 
lived in Mahoney. 

When the summer was over and gone and the maples 
were red on the mountains, I bade farewell to stupid chil- 
dren, Irish saints and Irish sinners, and made my way back 
to New York, in time to enter upon the study of sacred 
theology in the General Theological Seminary of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of Amer- 
ica, situated in what was known as the village of Chelsea, 
but then and now included in the city of New York, the 
property of the seminary lying between Twentieth and 
Twenty-first Streets and Ninth and Tenth Avenues. In 
my day there were no such beautiful buildings as now adorn 
the square, the Gothic church with its spire, the Oxford 
Gothic students’ quarters with their quads; nothing of this 
grandeur, only two grey-stone houses near either end of 
the square, in which were recitation rooms, dining-rooms, 
dormitories and residences of the Professors. ‘These build- 
ings accommodated between eighty and a hundred students 
who lived together as one family. ‘The seminary course 
covered three years of study; the classes were the juniors, 
the middlemen and the seniors. 

When I enrolled as a junior in the seminary, I was not 
subjected to the humiliations that made miserable the be- 
ginning of my college career. I had earned my right to 
the respect of my teachers and my fellow students. I came 
to the seminary from my college as an honour man, with 


THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY 85 


the logic prize and cum laude in philosophy. The semi- 
nary course included dogmatic and pastoral theology, Old 
Testament exegesis, including instruction in the Hebrew 
language; New Testament exegesis, with the reading of 
the Greek version, Church History and liturgiology. I do 
not think that there was ever an institution so inadequate 
to its purpose as this seminary when I was under its care. 
The professors were many of them clerical failures, whose 
friends had placed them on the seminary staff as a harbour 
of refuge. The professor of history did not have the 
historical mind; facts were nothing to him if they did not 
fit into his ecclesiastical, High Church theories; he was 
not honest with his class; in the course of his lectures he 
would refer his students to this and that obscure ancient 
authority, and I would find the substances of his lecture 
almost word for word in Mosheim, which was a text- 
book within easy reach of us all. This man was a 
brilliant, superficial talker, a fierce partisan and afterward 
a bishop. 

The professor of pastoral theology, an utter failure as 
a preacher, was set to teach us the science and art of 
preaching. We were kept for a year on Gresley’s ‘“T’rea- 
tise on Preaching,” a book which any half-way intelligent 
mind could have read and mastered in three hours. I was 
asked such questions as these: “Mr. Crapsey, should a 
sermon be too long?’ ‘No, Professor.” ‘Mr. Crapsey, 
should a sermon be too short?’ ‘‘No, Professor.’ ‘‘How 
should a sermon be, Mr. Crapsey?” It should be just 
about right, Professor.” ‘Correct, Mr. Crapsey.” I did 
not know then Bishop Potter’s formula for the length of 
a sermon which was “‘twenty minutes with a leaning to 
mercy.” 

The professor of the New Testament exegesis was a 
senile saint, the loveliest of all lovely old men, whose mind 
would go off at a tangent and meander in the most alluring 


86 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


way from the subject in hand until the hour was gone and 
he would say, ‘Well, well, gentlemen; you may take the 
same lesson for to-morrow.”’ 

The professor of dogmatic theology was nothing if not 
dogmatic; with him theology was based in belief, and so 
based it was not and could not be a science, and yet to him 
it was a science. he creed was to him as provable as 
the first proposition of Euclid. We were set to read Pear- 
son on the creed, who proved the creed by the citations of 
irrelevant texts of Scripture which proved anything but the 
articles of the creed. We were given Brown on the artt- 
cles, a book as big as a dictionary in which the poor articles 
were as lost as a handful of peas in a hogshead of water. 
We were given that funniest of all books, Bull’s “Man 
before the Fall,’ which was a bull—it brought man forth, 
a perfected work of a perfect God, fully clothed with his 
divine perfections and yet such a fool that he lost all 
these perfections at the whisper of a serpent and the be- 
guilement of a woman. I did not see all this at the time, 
but by this dogmatist was sown in my mind the seeds that 
in due season produced the deadly fruit of heresy. 

The professor of Old Testament exegesis deserves hon- 
ourable mention. Doctor Seabury was an old man ripe 
with the wisdom of age, never dogmatic, always delightful, 
always instructive; more ready to listen than to lecture. 
One morning when we had a knotty question of Old Testa- 
ment exegesis before us he said, ‘‘Come, gentlemen; Saint 
Paul says, ‘Without controversy, great is the mystery of 
godliness’; let us have controversy and clear up the mys- 
tery.’ Then with a laugh we went at it hammer and 
tongs. I can see the old man now crouching before his 
sea coal fire, his grey eyes gleaming with fun as he urged 
us on. I loved that old man and he loved me, but alas 
as we shall learn, it was through this holy man that I came 
to a hard fall from grace. 


THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY 87 


To the professor of Hebrew, Doctor Hall, I am ever 
grateful; he taught me to learn Hebrew by reading He- 
brew; not that he neglected the grammar; far from it. I 
remember that his great passion was for the athnach—and 
what the athnach was and is I cannot now remember. But 
I did come to read the language with some ease and it 
was a great help. I remember with pleasure the lectures 
of Dr. Francis Vinton, an assistant minister of Trinity 
parish, on ecclesiastic law. ‘These were highly instructive 
and interesting. I also enjoyed the talks of Bishop Hora- 
tio Potter to the senior class. I can see him now shaking 
his head and saying, ‘‘Gentlemen, some men read a book 
and digest it; other men read a book and it digests them. 
Gentlemen, be cautious in your reading. I have known 
men to read themselves out of the Church.” With such 
sayings did the wise prelate warn us of the intellectual 
dangers that lay in our ministerial path. Alas, had I but 
heeded the good old man and abandoned the bad habit of 
reading and thinking! But, after all, the professor in his 
classroom is the lesser influence in the life of the student; 
it is the impact of student mind upon student mind and the 
power of the general environment that gives value to the 
years of college life. I do not remember any man in the 
seminary in my time who gave evidence of unusual ability. 
Take us for all in all, we were a mediocre lot. 

But though uninteresting individually, we were very 
interesting in the mass. The atmosphere of the seminary 
was seething with controversy. If one had any illusion 
that the gospel of Christ was a gospel of peace, he would 
be speedily disillusioned in the General Seminary of the 
Protestant Episcopal Church. ‘There was perpetual war- 
fare between the ritualists and the rationalists. The his- 
toric movement to Catholicize the English Church, which 
was inaugurated by Keble and carried forward by Pusey 
and Manning, was pursuing its tumultuous course; it had 


88 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


captured the imagination and intellect of the Church; it 
had drowned out the old evangelicism; it crested in 
a wave of ritualism which made of the communion table 
an altar and clothed the ministry in the garments of the 
Catholic priesthood. No longer did we preach in the 
black gown. We ascended the pulpit in the white 
surplice; we chanted the psalms, sang the litany and 
intoned the prayers. We went up to the high altar 
in alb, embroidered stole and bejewelled chasuble. We 
were the priests of the most high God offering to Him 
the unbloody sacrifice for the sins of the world. We 
preached the celibacy of the clergy and our devout women 
founded sisterhoods. ‘The old High and Broad Church 
parties could not stand before the sweep of this ritualistic 
movement. 

But it in turn was being checked by a cross-current of 
rationalism. Maurice and Kingsley were preaching a reli- 
gion of reason and conscience. Bishop Temple was editing 
the ‘‘Essays and Reviews.” Colenso, the Bishop of Natal, 
was converted by the Zulus to a rational conception of the 
so-called ‘‘Books of Moses.’ All of this stress and storm 
of controversy was beating upon our seminary stronghold. 
The majority of us belonged to the ritualists, but we had 
to fight for our lives with the rationalists. It had all 
the excitement of the battlefield. 

It was also a part of our education to live in New York. 
We had the great city as our teacher. ‘The libraries and 
art galleries were open for our instruction. ‘The theatre 
and the concert allured us to sin to our advantage. I went 
about the city on the Sundays to listen to the great 
preachers. I heard Beecher and Storrs, Washburn and 
Dix; of these, the last was to me the ideal; Beecher was an 
orator; Storrs a logician; Washburn an essayist; Dix was a 
teacher. I can never forget the first sermon which I heard 
him preach. It was a louring day and I had strayed down 


THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY. 89 


Broadway till I came to St. Paul’s at Vesey Street. I went 
in by the Broadway door and went up the steps into the 
gallery. ‘here were only about three hundred people in 
the church that would hold a thousand. The service was 
well read by a benign elderly clergyman. When it was 
time for the sermon a tall grave man ascended the stairway 
to the high pulpit; he stood for a moment in silence but 
uttered no invocation; then in a quiet voice he said, 
“Friends, I wish to speak to you on ‘Wandering Thoughts 
in Prayer.’’’ He gave out no text, but proceeded to give 
an explanation of the phenomena of wandering thoughts. 
Instead of censuring this condition, as most preachers 
would, he explained it. He showed that the human mind 
was so constituted that it could carry on different lines of 
thought at the same time. I remember that he illustrated 
his subject from the trial scene of Fagin in ‘Oliver ‘Twist’; 
he showed us Fagin sitting in the chair of the prisoner, 
listening with all his soul to what was going on in the 
courtroom and at the same time counting the nails in the 
floor and multiplying the cross-sections! He finished his 
sermon without any ascription and went down out of the 
pulpit leaving every hearer informed as to the natural 
working of his own mind and freed for ever from the fear 
that his wandering thoughts were displeasing to God. 

During my second and third seminary years I eked out 
my slender resources by teaching for two hours every morn- 
ing in Trinity School. The late Dr. Lewis Parks was also 
teaching in the school. Now, Dr. Parks was a very little 
man, only about five feet two, and slender. ‘To correct 
this fault he wore a tall silk hat. When we walked the 
streets the urchins would cry after him, “Hey, Hat, where 
you takin’ that boy?” Parks, ignoring their cries, went 
bravely on. 

In the seminary, we were members, for eating-purposes, 
of “The Commons.’ ‘The weekly cost for each of us at 


go THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the Commons table was four dollars and fifty cents. This 
Commons was managed by a committee of students. At 
the end of my junior year the Commons was deeply in 
debt. A meeting of the students was called to consider the 
matter. After a long discussion it was decided to abolish 
the committee and put the Commons in charge of a steward. 
I was chosen to that responsible position. At the end of 
the first year, we had not only maintained the table up to 
the old standard, but we had paid the debt and had a sur- 
plus that enabled me to go into the spring markets and 
buy all the luxuries of the season. If it be asked how this 
miracle came to pass, I answer, first by the abolition of 
privilege. ‘The members of the committee and _ their 
friends were in the habit of sleeping late and coming down 
after breakfast and ordering omelets and chops and steaks. 
The new steward abolished that abuse. If a fellow wanted 
his breakfast he must come to his breakfast when breakfast 
was there; else no breakfast. There was some grumbling, 
but the law of the breakfast was the law of the breakfast 
and that was the end of it, and we saved some hundreds of 
dollars by this abolition of privilege, which is a parable; 
it is because of privilege that millions starve yearly in a 
world of privilege. The second reform that the steward 
made was in the method of buying. The committee would 
give orders for supplies at the near-by groceries and meat 
markets. [he steward employed the able janitor of the 
seminary, Mr. Hopper, as his assistant, and went with him 
three times a week to Washington Market, buying goods 
for cash and saving the retailer’s profit; groceries were 
likewise bought for cash from the wholesaler. This 
method saved about one-third of the cost of the mainte- 
nance of the Commons over the old way. The steward 
likewise attended to his own banking and thereby formed 
a friendship with Mr. James DePyster, president of the 
Bowery Savings Bank. When the steward left the semi- 


THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY gI 


nary, he carried with him a reputation as a business man 
and financier, which his later life did not justify. Why, 
this story will tell. He received as compensation for his 
work as steward the remission of his board, four dollars 
and fifty cents a week. 

I served Zion Church, Rome, for two summer seasons, 
made a group of highly valued friends, including the rec- 
tor of the parish, and above all I made the acquaintance 
and was blessed with the friendship of the Right Reverend 
Frederick Dan Huntington, by far the greatest man who 
ever sat in the House of Bishops of the American Church. 

And now we come to the last sad paragraph in this 
eventful chapter. My room in the seminary building was 
next to the study of Professor Seabury. At the close of 
my senior year, in examination week, the evening before 
the examination in Old Testament exegesis, I came home 
about nine o'clock and, putting my hand to the knob of 
the door, I found a paper there. Going into my room, I 
opened it and read: ‘Will Mr. Crapsey please step into 
Dr. Seabury’s study when he comes in?’ I stepped to the 
door and knocked. At “come in’’ I entered the study and 
saw the good Doctor sitting crouched up in his chair, the 
picture of despair. After I was seated and a little byplay 
of talk passed between us, he said, “You know, Mr. Crap- 
sey, that Daniel VIII is one of the themes at to-morrow’s 
examination?” I said, ‘‘Yes, Doctor, I know it.” ‘Well, 
now,’ said he, “I am troubled about that theme; if some 
of those men get that theme, they’ll make asses of them- 
selves and an ass of me, and I wouldn't like it; no, I 
wouldn’t like that at all. Now, you know, Mr. Crapsey, 
I have nothing to do with the assignment of themes, but I 
was thinking that you might care to look over that chapter 
before you went to bed and consult South and Louth, so 
if the theme should happen to come to you, you might do 
it justice, as I know you can.” [I said, “Thank you, Doc- 


92 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


tor’; and I rose up and he rose up; he looked at me and 
I looked at him, and we neither winked an eyelash. I 
went to my room, took up my Hebrew Bible and read that 
eighth chapter over and over, until Daniel himself, if 
there ever were a Daniel, could not have read it more 
fluently. I went to the library and took down South and 
Louth and arranged the big horns and little horns until I 
could play upon them in a way to shame South and Louth. 
When I finished with them the grey of the morning had 
come. I rushed to my room, undressed, put on my bath- 
robe, ran to the bathroom, turned on the cold shower, ran 
back to my room, threw myself upon the bed, fell into a 
deep sleep from which I was aroused by the ringing of the 
bell for breakfast. I rose, dressed carefully and went 
down to my morning meal in a blue funk. If I didn’t get 
that theme, I was lost as a scholar; if I did get it, I was 
damned as a man. 

When the hour arrived I went to the recitation room 
and saw the five examiners sitting in a row on the platform, 
the professor on the floor to their right. ‘The plan was 
for one of the examiners to select a theme at random, 
hand it to the chairman, who would call the name of a stu- 
dent and ask him to discuss the subject of the paper. 

The chairman was calling the names in alphabetical or- 
der; when he had gotten through the B’s, he was handed 
a theme; he looked at it, paused, looked at it again and 
said with a smile, “I think we will skip about a bit. Mr. 
Cranston, will you please take this Daniel VIII?” With 
sinking heart, I looked at Cranston and his face was grey 
as ashes. Just then Professor Seabury was taken with a 
fit of violent coughing, which lasted half a minute; the 
chairman rose up and handed him a glass of water. I saw 
the professor move his lips. When he returned to his 
seat the chairman said, ‘‘Let me see, whom was I calling— 
it was Mr. Crapsey, was it not? Yes, it was Mr. Crap- 


THE WAYS OF A SEMINARY 93 


sey; Mr. Crapsey, will you kindly read for us in the He- 
brew Daniel VIII and give us an exegesis of that interest- 
ing chapter?” I looked at Cranston and he looked at me 
with a diabolical grin on his face. But what of that?— 
my hour had come. I opened the Hebrew Bible, read 
Daniel VIII as if I were a Jewish rabbi; then explained 
the meaning of the big horns and the little horns, playing 
upon them a trenody of judgment on a sinful world. 
When I sat down the class broke out into clapping of 
hands and cheering. ‘The chairman rose up and said: 
“Mr. Crapsey, permit me, on behalf of the examiners, to 
congratulate you on your brilliant exposition of this most 
dificult chapter. Your fluency in the reading of the He- 
brew, your sound exegesis are worthy of all praise and 
reflect great credit upon the learned professor under whose 
instruction you have attained to such excellence.” And 
again the class applauded. 

Then I turned and bowed to the professor, and the 
professor bowed to me, and we neither winked an eyelash. 

This sin has been on my conscience all these years. I 
have never openly confessed until now. But what could 
Ido? I could not let any one of my fellow students make 
an ass of himself, much less make an ass of my beloved 
professor, could I now? 


CHAPTER XVI 


A DEACON OF SORTS 


ITH our examination our relation as students of 

V\ the seminary came to an end. The seminary 
at that time did not confer any degree upon its 
graduates, nor did its examination give any right of en- 
trance to the ministry of the Church. ‘The power to con- 
fer orders was vested in the bishop, who, however, ac- 
cepted graduation from the seminary as evidence of our 
fitness for the service of the Church and confined his ex- 
amination to the questions in the prayer-book, the answers 
to which are commonly called the “ordination vows.” 
These vows, like marriage vows, are taken glibly, and are 
kept or not, as circumstances determine. Jesus being the 
witness, all vows are immoral. He says, Matthew v, 33, 
“Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, “Thou 
shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the 
Lord thine oaths; but I say unto you, swear not at all, 
neither by the Heaven, for it is the Throne of God, nor 
by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet, nor by 
Jerusalem, for it is the City of the Great King. Neither 
shalt thou swear by thy head; for thou canst not make 
one hair white nor black. But let your speech be yea, yea, 
nay, nay, for whatsoever is more than these is of the Evil 
One’”’ (i.e., the Devil). And yet in utter defiance of 
these clear words of Jesus, the Church made ordination 
vows necessary to all who would enter upon the work of 
preaching the gospel of Jesus. I wish now to confess my 


stupidity and my sinfulness when I took these so-called 
94 


A DEACON OF SORTS 95 


vows. In doing so, I did violence, not only to moral, but 
to natural law. I vowed that I would take all my opin- 
ions at second hand; that I would never think for myself. 
The first and second of my ordination vows nullified each 
other. ‘The first vow was that I would teach nothing as 
necessary to salvation but that which J shall be persuaded 
may be concluded and proved by the Holy Scripture. The 
second vow required that I should teach the truths of 
Scripture, not as I found them, but only as This Church 
hath received the same. By these vows, I became as one 
of the lawyers, whom Jesus so severely condemned. I 
was never to seek after truth, as truth, but only to hunt for 
arguments to buttress received doctrine. My only excuse 
for my sin is the immaturity of my mind and soul at the 
time, my lack of moral and intellectual discipline. This 
is the great sin of the Church against the soul of man; 
because of these vows multitudes of men have lived stunted 
lives. For failure to keep the vows the bravest of men 
have been burned at the stake; because of insistence on 
these vows the Church has shut out from her ministry men 
of progressive minds and so has lost the intellectual, 
moral and spiritual leadership of the world. The prophet 
can never be bound by a vow; he must utter the word as 
the word comes to him; hence the everlasting conflict of 
the prophet and the priest. But nowadays all vows, mar- 
riage vows, priestly vows, vows in courts, are taken in a 
Pickwickian sense and in due time they will pass away with 
other useless lumber of the past and the teaching of Jesus 
will be accepted as the teaching of common sense: ‘Then 
we will have no more perjuries, no more divorces, and as 
for heresy trials, as we will see farther on, they are out- 
lawed already. 

Having made this confession of juvenile delinquency, I 
will go on with my personal history. My admiration and 
friendship for and with Bishop Huntington, of Central 


96 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


New York, led to a mutual desire that I should begin my 
ministerial work in his diocese, and he was ready to give 
such work upon my graduation and ordination. But when 
I suggested this to Bishop Potter, of New York, he 
frowned and shook his hoary head at me and said, se- 
verely; LD think, )Mr.).Crapsey,aiiilihavevhad the;carewon 
your preparation I am entitled at least to the service of 
your diaconate.’’ I bowed and said, “Certainly, Bishop, 
if you have anything for me to do.” ‘To which his lord- 
ship responded with dignity, “I think, sir, that we can find 
work for you in the dioceses of New York.” But all the 
same when I was ready for work there was no work ready 
for me in the dioceses of New York. 

In my days of idleness I dropped in on my friend, Philip 
A. H. Brown, whom [| had known in the seminary. Brown 
had graduated a year ahead of me and was serving as 
deacon in St. Paul’s Chapel; he had just accepted a call to 
the church at Cooperstown, New York, and as a conse- 
quence was about to vacate his position. He said nothing 
to me and I nothing to him in regard to my taking his 
place. But in a few days, as I believe a consequence of 
this chance visit, I received a letter from Dr. Morgan 
Dix, rector of Trinity parish, offering me the position of 
deacon in the parish with duty at St. Paul’s Chapel, which 
offer I accepted at once. Some days after this acceptance, 
I had a letter from my bishop telling me that he thought 
I might safely call on Dr. Dix and say that he, the bishop, 
had sent me, but the bishop was days behind the fair. 
I did not owe this call to him, but to that “‘divinity that 
shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we may.’’ I went to 
my clerical tailor, had him make for me a suit of clerical 
garments. I buttoned my collar behind, my waistcoat 
close to my collar, but still found a shirt, if not a necessity, 
at least a comfort. 

I entered upon the duties of my diaconate on the first 


A DEACON OF SORTS Q7 
day of September in the year 1872, in the twenty-fifth year 
of my age. ‘These diaconates of Trinity parish, of which 
there were several, served as a sort of post-graduate 
course to students in the seminary; the tenure was usually 
one year; the consequence of this was that the deacon was 
a deacon of sorts, good, bad, indifferent. 

Dr. Dix used to tell with glee of the old Irishwoman 
who sent him this message: ‘‘Dear Docthor Dix—Me 
rheumatics is thot bad, will ye plase sind me some line- 
ment, some red flannel and any sort a deacon you’ve got?” 
Hence, ‘‘the deacon of sorts.” The deacons of Trinity 
parish were real deacons after the manner of the primitive 
Church; their chief duty was to serve the poor. They 
sometimes read the lessons in the Church service, but only 
by accident did a deacon preach, and this was as it should 
be. ‘The young minister should be trained first to service. 
I count myself lucky that I had my training under a great 
pastor and a still greater woman. 

When I entered the service of Trinity parish in St. 
Paul’s Chapel, this church was in the last stage of a long 
transition. It was built before the Revolutionary War 
to serve the more wealthy of the parishioners of the parish 
who had moved up from the region of Whitehall and Wall 
Streets to the then more fashionable neighbourhood of 
Chambers Street. It was in the later years of the eight- 
eenth and the earlier years of the nineteenth centuries the 
fashionable church of the city. When the government of 
the United States was established, New York was the cap- 
ital city. When Washington was inaugurated the first 
President of the new Republic, prayers were said in St. 
Paul’s Chapel and from there the procession went down to 
Wall Street where Washington made his inaugural ad- 
dress and took the oath of office. Throughout his stay in 
New York the President was an attendant upon divine 
service at St. Paul’s. He had his pew there, which re- 


98 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

mains to this day a perpetual memorial to his greatness. 
But the constant shifting of population in the city of New 
York had long before my coming carried the centre of 
fashion to St. John’s Square at Varick Street; then to Fifth 
Avenue and Washington Square, and then to Twenty- 
third Street. Business drove the wealthy northward and 
poverty came in to degrade its handsome houses to the 
rank of tenements. 

It was this region that Dr. Dix served as a pastor, com- 
ing to the parish as a curate, promoted before he was 
thirty to the rectorship; he remained for fifteen years the 
shepherd of this flock in the tenements. Associated with 
him in this work was a woman of utter devotion and rare 
genius. I have already written at large of these two; this 
man and this woman in my book, “Sarah Thorne—the 
Story of a Simple Life,’ which is now out of print, but 
which I am minded to include in a volume in preparation 
giving more minutely my experience in St. Paul’s Chapel 
under the title of “Old St. Paul’s.” JI can now do no more 
than acknowledge my debt of gratitude to Morgan Dix 
and Sarah Wisner Thorne, who initiated me into the sci- 
ence of that service of God which is the service of man. 
When I came to the chapel there was a remnant of the old 
congregation still loyal. For reasons which I need not 
specify, St. Paul’s was the rectors’ church; Dr. Francis Vin- 
ton was the minister in charge of Old Trinity, as it was 
called, although St. Paul’s, as a building, antedated it by 
nearly fifty years. ‘To strangers that flocked to Trinity, 
Dr. Vinton stood out as the great man of the parish; only 
occasionally did Dr. Dix preach in that pulpit. But just 
as I was entering upon my duties, Dr. Vinton’s failing 
health compelled his retirement and Dr. Dix was about to 
take his proper place as rector of the parish. 

His chief assistant at St. Paul’s was also a man well 


A DEACON OF SORTS 99 
stricken in years, unable for full duty and wishing to retire. 
This state of affairs gave to the deacon of St. Paul’s duties 
and opportunities that were unusual. He became, indeed, 
locum tenens in the chapel, having the charge of the parish 
work and doing some of the preaching. So when the pe- 
riod of my diaconate came to an end and I was duly or- 
dered to the priesthood, Dr. Dix called me to his office and 
told me that the vestry desired that I should continue in 
the service of the parish as priest officiating until they 
could find someone whom they could call to the position 
of senior assistant, in charge of St. Paul’s Chapel, my 
salary to be increased from fifteen to twenty-five hundred 
dollars a year. 

I was ordained priest by Bishop Potter in Saint Chrys- 
ostom Chapel, Trinity parish. The sermon was preached 
by an African bishop, a wild man from Borneo. Of that 
sermon I did not recall a word, but I can see and hear the 
man to this day. 

I was presented for ordination by my immediate supe- 
rior in St. Paul’s Chapel, Dr. Benjamin I. Haight. Of 
this man I can never think without tears of gratitude. He 
was not by natural gift a preacher nor an administrator, 
but he was a soul. He had wide influence because of his 
kindliness, his face beamed with the light of human love. 
He was to me in the Church what Elisha Sackett was in 
the business world, my father. When on the Sunday fol- 
lowing my ordination to the priesthood I celebrated my 
first communion, Dr. Haight served as my deacon, bring- 
ing to me the bread and the wine to bless and the water to 
wash my hands. And when we came to the vesting-room 
he laid his hands on my head and blessed me, tears run- 
ning down his cheeks. “God bless you, my boy; I am 
going, you are coming. May you be a better, greater 
servant of God than I have been.” I served with Dr. 


IOO THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


Haight for nearly a year, when he was taken from his bed 
to his grave; greater men than he have lived, but never a 
sweeter, simpler soul. 

So I ceased to be a “deacon of sorts’ and became a 
priest officiating. But while still in the diaconate [ 
brought about two reforms in the ritual of the Church 
and waked a bishop. ‘The first reform I brought to pass 
unbeknown to Drs. Dix and Haight and so secretly ful- 
filled a desire of their hearts. At that time there was a 
dispute whether in celebrating the Holy Communion the 
priests were to stand at the north and south sides of the 
altar or at the north and south ends of the altar. The 
rubric said at the north end, but the Low Church men with 
Low Church logic insisted that the north end meant the 
north side and the High and Drys agreed with the Lows, 
while the Catholics insisted that the north end meant the 
north end. Dr. Dix was a Catholic, but he had not the 
courage of his convictions and the hassocks upon which 
the priests knelt were still at the north and south sides of 
the altar, much to the grief of the dear rector. 

The young deacon, having compassion on the rector, 
solved the problem for him. Late one Saturday after- 
noon, when the church was all in readiness for the Sunday 
services, the deacon went in and removed the kneeling has- 
socks from the north and south sides to the north and 
south ends of the altar. When Drs. Dix and Haight 
came into the chancel the next morning they paused and 
looked at the hassocks. Dr. Dix looked at Dr. Haight 
and Dr. Haight looked at Dr. Dix, and then they both 
dropped to their knees on the hassocks as they lay at the 
north and south ends of the altar, and the universe went 
on just the same. 

(ihe) next {reform swas\ /moremapractical apt ae 
Church faces the churchyard and backs on Broadway. 
Most of the people came in and went out of the Broad- 


A DEACON OF SORTS IOI 


way or back doors; the consequence was that at the close 
of the service the congregation would immediately start 
for the back doors and bar the exit of the clergy from the 
chancel to the vesting-room, and the clergy would meekly 
sit and wait for the clearing of the way. As a conse- 
quence of this, the people formed the habit of stopping for 
a moment to greet the clergy on their way out. 

So it came to pass one Sunday morning as | was sitting 
waiting at the chancel rail, dear Mrs. Haight, the younger, 
the charming wife of the son of Dr. Haight, came and 
passed the time of day. I asked the usual question as 
to the state of her health. She answered, “Oh, I have 
a dreadful cold; I hardly dared to come to church.” I 
replied, “Oh, I know a perfect cure. for a cold, Mrs. 
Haight”; and she asked, “What is it? Do tell me.” I 
said, ‘‘When you go to bed put a hat on your bedpost and 
drink gin till you see two hats.” Dear Mrs. Haight 
clapped her hand over her mouth and went out shaking 
with laughter and I, coming to my senses, was shocked at 
my irreverence. 

When we came to the vesting-room I said to the rector, 
“Dr. Dix, don’t you think it would be more dignified, more 
conducive to reverence, if the clergy went out of the church 
at the close of the service, the people waiting for them 
instead of they for the people?” Dr. Dix thought a mo- 
ment and said, ‘‘Why, I believe it would.” So it was 
done. 

While I was still deacon at St. Paul’s and John Henry 
Houghton was deacon at Trinity, the champion Low 
Church bishop, MclIlvaine, of Ohio, died in Europe and 
his remains were brought over, that he might be buried 
in the land of his fathers. This bishop was the general- 
issimo of the armies of the Low Church, seeking to drive 
the Highs, but more especially the Ritualists, out of the 
Church. Candles in the church were his especial abom- 


102 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


ination. When the remains of this saintly man—for he 
was a saintly man—arrived in this country and were 
landed from the steamer in New York, they were placed 
for the night in the chancel of St. Paul’s Chapel, and the 
deacon of Trinity and the deacon of St. Paul’s were ap- 
pointed by the rector as night watchers over the sacred 
relics of this servant of God. ‘These young men rever- 
enced a bishop. ‘They could not bear that this bishop 
should not be waked as a bishop ought to be waked. So 
they brought the candelabra with their seven-branch can- 
dlesticks each with its lighted candle and put them at his 
head and feet. ‘They went to the vesting-room, found the 
funeral pall with its white cross on purple ground, and 
with it covered the coffin, and then these young men knelt 
down and prayed for the repose of the soul of the bishop. 
When the sexton told of this the next morning and the 
story got abroad, irate Low-Churchmen demanded that 
the rector rebuke his deacons. But the rector said, ‘Not 
so; the bishop is now glad of it, for he is in the light of the 
seven golden candlesticks burning before the Throne of 


God.” And so did we wake the bishop. 


CHAPTER XVII 


PRIEST OFFICIATING 


R. DIX and Sarah Thorne had made St. Paul’s 
1) Chapel the centre of a gracious ministration to 
the people of the neighbourhood. They were 
constant in their endeavours to alleviate the miseries 
which the landlords and the employers created; inadequate 
lodging, insuficient food and shabby clothing were the 
inevitable consequences of high rents and low wages. 
There was, as yet, no thought on the part of anyone that 
these conditions were remediable and should be remedied. 
The era of social reform had not yet dawned. Miss 
Thorne and her associate workers made and distributed 
thousands of garments every year. Miss Thorne came 
to her work every day at noon with the regularity of a 
business woman. Her workroom was on the second floor 
of the parish house; its walls were lined with shelves 
loaded with clothing. Women and children were con- 
stantly coming and going as to a public store, to receive 
for love and not for money decent covering to hide their 
nakedness and to keep them warm. In this work Miss 
Thorne was assisted by a group of earnest women who 
came on certain days to work under her direction and this 
work, though voluntary, was not irregular. These women 
served under Miss Thorne as under a taskmaster. 
The large reception room on the first floor was thronged 
every day with beggars from the street, with the pen- 
sioners of the parish and the private pensioners of Dr. 


Dix, who gave freely of his own wealth to abate as far as 
103 


104 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


it could the wretchedness of the poor. Dr. Dix, then in 
his forties, was unmarried, was living downtown in the 
old rectory at St. John’s Park. He was the ideal of a 
Christian minister; his garden was the playground of the 
children of the tenements and his house their playhouse. 
There was no lovelier sight than to see this man of God 
taking part in the games of the children, as one of 
themselves. 

In these works of mercy the deacon of St. Paul’s was 
the hands and the feet of these noble souls and minds; 
my promotion to the rank of priest officiating did not re- 
lieve me from the burden of deaconal duties. ‘Till I left 
the parish I was the deacon of St. Paul’s, and a busy dea- 
con [ was. At eleven o’clock I would come to the office 
and dispose of the applications for relief, paying the pen- 
sioners and listening to the pleas of the beggars, and a 
motley crew they were. They were the human refuse 
of the great city; the bloated drunkard and the sleek con- 
fidence man; the respectable widow and the cast-off of 
the brothel. Tales of woe to break the heart, stories of 
deception to beguile the wisdom of the wise; those hours 
from eleven to one were depressing to melancholy. It 
was a hateful task to sit and listen to these degraded men 
and women; their breath foul with vile whisky and gin; 
their eyes bleared, their hands shaking. ‘There was your 
whining beggar and your insolent beggar; your tearful 
woman and your leering woman. ‘To have satisfied this 
hungry horde would have absorbed the revenues of ‘Trinity 
twice over. ‘To sit and say no was to incur the hate of 
the best haters in the world. 

The most dangerous of these parasites were the con- 
fidence men and the sly women. One of the most adroit 
of the confidence men was your “relative.’’ I was sitting 
in my office one afternoon, after hours, when a well- 
appearing man came in, greeting me with the information 


PRIEST OFFICIATING 105 


that he was my cousin, the son of my Uncle John in Chi- 
cago. After chatting a while, he asked me how far it was 
to Hartford, or rather how long it would take him to get 
to Hartford, and when I answered, ‘‘About two hours,” 
he said, ‘Oh, I don’t mean by train, I mean how long will 
it take me to walk?” ‘To walk? Why do you want to 
walk?’ ‘Then came a tale of woe, money lost on the train, 
and then out of my slender purse ten dollars was taken 
and handed over to this “relative” in distress. After he 
had gone I came suddenly to the realizing sense that, to 
my knowledge, I never had an Uncle John in Chicago. 
This man had hypnotized me into the possession of this 
uncle. Of course, the profuse promises of immediate re- 
turn were never fulfilled. 

But it behooves the deacon above all things to beware 
of the sly woman. She does not ask for help, only for 
sympathy. She has her pitiful story of betrayal; she is 
young and alluring; she has had to leave her home in a 
country village and hide herself in the great city; she can- 
not find work; she may soon be on the street and, with 
brimming eyes: “You know what that means, sir; won’t 
you save me from that?’ You offer money; it is refused: 
‘T only want your sympathy; your friendship. Won't you 
come and see me? My name is Inez Smith. I have my 
room at such a number and street.” He is a wise deacon 
who escapes from the snare of Inez Smith. 

When the church clock strikes one, the alms-giving hour 
for the day is past, the office boy opens the door and the 
unsatisfied souls go forth to steal what they could not 
beg. All this work, most unscientific, most unethical, 
leaves the deacon with dirty hands, defiled soul, and dis- 
tressed mind. He can wash his hands in water; he 
can cleanse his soul by prayer and calm his mind by 
indifference. 

After half an hour of rest and refreshment with a bowl 


106 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


of bread and milk, the deacon goes up to Miss Thorne 
and takes his orders for the afternoon. He is to carry 
liniment and red flannel to Father Lemprier; he is to take 
medicine and money to Mother Magrath; he is to visit 
Mrs. Vail, the opium-eater, and give her an antidote; and 
so from house to house till the afternoon passes into the 
night. Father Lemprier lives on the second floor of a 
sometime mansion, now a tenement; he is a longshoreman 
doubled up with rheumatism; sits all day and all night in 
his chair, his room foul with the exhalation of himself, 
a wife and a daughter, who eat and sleep in this one room 
without running water or sanitary closet. ‘This is the re- 
ward of years of labour. How much better would it have 
been if this man had been born a horse! We turn a worn- 
out horse out to pasture where he has pure air, rich grass 
and clean water. Yes, it is far better in this world to be a 
working horse than a working man. 

Mrs. Magrath lives in the cellar of an Old Dutch Bow- 
erie in Peck Slip; the first floor is a saloon, the second 
floor is a doss-house for men, who sleep on a doss-blanket 
which lets them down with a jerk in the morning. Scat- 
tered through the slip are the lowest of brothels for the 
service of sailors. Mrs. Magrath is a blind beggar and a 
pensioner of Trinity parish. The Vails are New Eng- 
land people, the father a sometime captain of a sloop, 
now, through drink, a stevedore, the mother a Devonshire 
blonde and an opium-eater, a son with a broken hip 
through a fall in a warehouse, one daughter, the support 
of these wrecks of humanity, and another daughter, study- 
ing to be a teacher at the high school. 

So the deacon goes from cellar to garret and from gar- 
ret to cellar with Sarah Thorne’s words of kindness and 
deeds of love, into this world of darkness and despair. 

When I received my appointment as priest officiating, 
I took a suite of rooms—that is, two rooms and a closet 





PRIEST OFFICIATING 107 


—at No. 47 Church Street, where I did my eating and my 
sleeping, and, when time permitted, my reading. My 
bedroom was without light or ventilation. I had no bath, 
only a sink and running water. This house was over a 
grocery store with a barroom. It was next door to a 
large tenement; it had a dark unventilated closet; the 
neighbourhood was the home of longshoremen and la- 
bourers; in those days, in Greenwich Street and West 
Street, were saloons and brothels of the lowest order. 
Every Saturday night the tenement next door was alive 
with men and women howling drunk, who the next morn- 
ing went quietly to mass. For this habitation I paid 
thirty-five dollars a month and glad to get it. The clergy 
as a rule lived uptown and came down about noon to their 
work when it was convenient, but I have always had the 
feeling that a shepherd should live with his sheep. 

The parish building at 7 Church Street was kept in or- 
der, after a fashion, by the janitress, old Mary, an Irish- 
woman of grey hair and wrinkled face; she was kindly but 
querulous. She had seen so many deacons come and go 
that they were of no respect in her eyes. She was the 
humble servant of the rector, the servitor of Sarah 
Thorne, the equal of the assistant minister, and the stern 
boss of deacons. From them Mary would take no non- 
sense. If a poor deacon forgot his keys and had to ring 
the bell and call ‘“‘old Mary” down from her loft he got a 
wigging that made him mind his p’s and q’s, from that 
day to his last as a deacon. 

Now old Mary had a sister and she was a widow; her 
name was Mrs. Hill. It was always a wonder to me why 
the defunct Hill came to marry old Mary’s sister, but it 
was no mystery at all as to why he made her his widow. 
I employed old Mary’s sister, Mrs, Hill, as my cook and 
housekeeper. She was a long, lank creature with greyish- 
black hair, watery blue eyes, twisted nose and mouth. 


108 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


When she laid my breakfast, she left her dishrag on the 
table, but I clung desperately to her because she could make 
coffee, toast scones and broil a steak. As for my bed, it 
was made or not, as the spirit moved old Mary’s sister, but 
when I came to bed I was usually so tired that I never 
noticed so unimportant a matter as an unmade bed. 

I had to live downtown near my work because the most 
important of that work was done after nightfall. Sarah 
Thorne and Dr. Dix had provided for the women and 
children, but no provision had been made for the men. 
After Sunday-school age the young men were left to drift 
away and so were lost to the church and too often lost to 
decent living. One of my first efforts after I had been 
made priest officiating was to get some of the young men 
together in a club. We had meetings once a week for 
social development and the promotion of goodwill. We 
organized for parish work; carried a course of scientific 
lectures through a winter in Trinity Hall. If I wanted to 
see these men I had to call on them or meet with them 
between eight o’clock and midnight, and it was often in 
the early hours of the morning that I made my lonely way 
through Church Street, sometimes followed by a police- 
man as a suspicious character, and stumbled up my tene- 
ment stairs to my unmade bed. ‘Those were great months 
that I would not have missed for all that has come 
afterward. 

In addition to these diaconal duties I, as priest officiat- 
ing, had charge of the Sunday school, which met before 
church in the morning; in this school I taught a Bible class 
of older boys and girls. As soon as Sunday school was 
dismissed I had to assume the direction of the public wor- 
ship of the chapel and often preach the sermon. Indeed, 
I was, during that period of interregnum, priest, deacon, 
office boy and errand boy all in one. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


JUNIOR ASSISTANT MINISTER 


LL through the summer and fall of 1873 I was 
A virtually in charge of St. Paul’s Chapel. All the 
parish work devolved on me, in which I had 

the aid and advice of Sarah Thorne; I had charge of the 
church services and did about half of the preaching. 
Dr. Haight was still able for an occasional sermon and Dr. 
Dix would come up about once a month from Old Trinity. 
Meanwhile, the vestry was looking high and low for a 
man equal to the charge of St. Paul’s Chapel. He must 
be a preacher of parts who could attract and hold a con- 
gregation; he must have organizing ability and social 
power. Only such a prodigy could revive the declining 
life of this sometime fashionable and prosperous church. 
The morning congregation, as already noted, numbered 
among its members some two hundred elderly men and 
women who came from uptown to this church of their 
fathers and of their own early years. These men and 
women did not see and could not see that the St. Paul’s 
of their fathers and of their youth was gone, never to re- 
turn. ‘The building was there but the neighbourhood was 
changed beyond recognition. When St. Paul’s was in its 
prime, it was the centre of fashion, wealth and culture; its 
parishioners were bankers, merchants and lawyers; King’s, 
afterward Columbia, College was in the neighbourhood. 
But with the last quarter of a century all that had 
passed away never to return. The vestry had replaced 


the primitive frame building at the head of Wall 
| 109 


110 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

Street with the present Gothic structure and ‘Trinity 
Church was, at the time of my service, the centre of 
attraction for the wealth of the parish and for the 
curious stranger visiting the city. Beside this down- 
town competition, St. Paul’s lost the best of its people to 
Trinity Chapel in Twenty-fifth Street, which had just been 
erected by the vestry for the accommodation of the up- 
town members of the parish. 

Had the realities of the situation been recognized, St. 
Paul’s would have been torn down, the dead in its church- 
yard removed, and the immensely valuable property de- 
voted to business purposes; or if this seemed a desecration, 
then wisdom would have suggested that it be made a mis- 
sion chapel under the direct supervision of the rector. 
But the older members of the congregation would not 
think of such degradation, nor did it occur to the rector 
or the vestry. 

Trinity parish is not only unlike any other parish in the 
United States, but it is unique among the ecclesiastical or- 
ganizations of the world. It is an institution of vast 
wealth and proportionate influence. This wealth and in- 
fluence is the direct result of what is known as the “Queen 
Ann Donation.” This queen, it seems, was possessed, 
presumably by right of conquest, of a large tract of land 
lying along the shore of the Hudson River. This tract, 
known as ‘“The Queen’s Farm,” was conveyed by her Ma- 
jesty to a recently established corporation, known in law 
as “The Rector-Wardens and Vestrymen of Trinity 
Church.”’ This corporation was created for the purpose 
of providing the members of the Established Church of 
England with opportunities for divine worship. Trinity 
Church was at that time, and for a long period following, 
the only parish of the Episcopal Church in the city. It 
was from the beginning the church of the ruling class. 
It gradually attracted to itself the wealthier of the old 


JUNIOR ASSISTANT MINISTER de 


Dutch families and reduced the Dutch Church to a posi- 
tion of inferiority. 

At the time of the Queen Ann Donation the land so 
donated was of comparatively little value, but with the in- 
crease of population there was a corresponding increase 
in the value of this tract and by its sale and rental Trinity 
parish was able to carry on an extensive religious work, 
not only in the city, but also in the Province of New York. 
During the earlier period of its history it gave freely of its 
property for the endowment of rural churches, colleges 
and schools. For some time after the Revolution the rec- 
tor of Trinity was usually the bishop of the diocese of 
New York. 

As Trinity Church was thus for a long time the only 
parish in New York, it built in various parts of the city 
Chapels of Ease for the convenience of its people. St. 
Paul’s Chapel was the first of these Chapels of Ease. It 
was under the spiritual jurisdiction of the rector and was 
served by an assistant minister, appointed upon the nom- 
ination of the rector, by the vestry. The position of 
senior assistant minister of Trinity parish carried in my 
day a salary of ten thousand dollars a year, twice that of 
the Governor of the State and of a Senator of the United 
States. For such a sum the vestry of Trinity felt that it 
had the right to the services of a man of first-rate ability, 
a preacher learned and eloquent, an organizer prudent and 
efficient, a pastor spiritual and sympathetic. There were 
at the time not fifty men on the list of the clergy of the 
Episcopal Church who came within sight of these require- 
ments, and these men usually preferred the headship of a 
large city church to any position that Trinity vestry could 
offer unless it were the rectorship. Man after man was 
canvassed, but this one declined to consider and that one 
was lacking in this or that qualification; either he was too 
high or too low, too broad or too narrow, for not only 


AS ed THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


must the man’s personal characteristics be adequate, but he 
must be of that peculiar type of churchmanship which was 
approved by the parish. 

Meanwhile the priest officiating was proceeding to or- 
ganize the work of the Chapel as its necessities suggested. 
He was becoming more and more the pastor of the neigh- 
bourhood; his society of young men under his direction 
was doing the work of half a dozen deacons; he was or- 
ganizing the older men into a mutual benefit society, gather- 
ing in the longshoremen and the teamsters from the river- 
side, the mechanics and the clerks from the tenements. 

He was celebrating the Holy Communion at seven every 
Sunday morning, superintending the Sunday school and 
teaching his Bible class from nine-thirty to ten-thirty, con- 
ducting divine worship and sometimes preaching from 
eleven to twelve-thirty, conducting children’s service once 
a month at three in the afternoon and service every Sun- 
day evening at seven. This priest officiating was reading 
history, theology and philosophy from eight to eleven, 
was in his office disposing of from twenty to thirty cases 
from eleven to one every day, visiting the sick and the 
poor from two to six in the afternoon and on call in the 
evening till midnight. He was with his workingmen’s 
club and his young men’s club on appointed evenings. All 
this he was doing as a day’s work contentedly, happily, 
for two thousand five hundred dollars a year. Mean- 
while, Trinity vestry was scouring the American Church 
to find a man who would consent to do part of this work 
for ten thousand dollars a year—but such is the way 
of vestries. 

After passing under survey the prominent clergy of the 
Episcopal Church the choice of the vestry fell upon a gen- 
tleman of whom it is not unjust to say that he did not 
quite come up to specifications. He was not a St. Chryso- 
stom in the pulpit, nor a St. Gregory in the pastoral office, 


JUNIOR ASSISTANT MINISTER Lt 


nor did he have the social charm of Giovanni de Medici, 
Pope Leo X. He was an ordinary clergyman of the sec- 
ond class. He was a man who had gone from parish to 
parish, serving each for about five years and always most 
highly recommended by the parish he was leaving. He 
had been called from the fashionable church of a small 
Western town. He was without experience or aptitude 
for the work of St. Paul’s Chapel. He might, and did, 
minister to the few old men and women who lived uptown, 
but they had, for the most part, reached that point in 
their spiritual cateer that called only for the offices of the 
visitation of the sick and the burial of the dead. This 
good man had ten thousand dollars to spend and it re- 
quired time and thought to accomplish the task. He 
rented a two-thousand-dollar house uptown. For the 
sake of his health he would walk from his house in the 
Twenties to his office at Vesey Street, a journey of from 
an hour and a half to two hours; would stay in his office 
an hour and return to his home for early dinner. 

On Sundays he would preach a sermon carefully selected 
from his barrel, a sermon safe and sound, too long for a 
nap, not long enough for a slumber. ‘The vestry were 
not long in discovering that, whatever else he might be, 
he was not an energetic parish worker, and there was work 
to be done in St. Paul’s. 

To meet this condition the vestry did a very unwise 
thing, as you may see. After this gentleman had been at 
the head of St. Paul’s Chapel for about three months, the 
rector came to my room of a Tuesday morning, his face 
aglow, and told me that at its meeting on the previous 
evening the vestry of Trinity Church had placed me on the 
permanent staff of the parish as junior assistant minister, 
at a salary of four thousand dollars a year, and that he 
would assign me to duty at St. Paul’s Chapel. ‘This was a 
startling thing for me and most remarkable for the parish. 


114 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


Here was I, only twenty months out of the seminary, less 
than three months a priest, and here was the rector of 
Trinity handing me one of the plums of the clerical pro- 
fession. I was fixed for life, a prelate of the Church; 
all that I had to do was to do nothing out of the way, and 
in due time I would be senior assistant minister with a 
salary of ten thousand a year, with the possibility of the 
rectorship of the parish and a bishopric always in sight. 
At once I became an important man, much talked of in 
the Church—my people at home were, of course, proud of 
me and my Uncle Isaac took all the credit to himself, see- 
ing that he had recommended me to go to New York. 

But nevertheless it was an unjust, unwise thing for the 
vestry to do and dangerous for me. It was really an in- 
sult to the senior assistant minister; it was done without 
consulting him and, in effect, took the direction of the 
work out of his hands, and he knew it. It placed me in 
an impossible situation and ministered to my pride and 
vanity. But I did not see these consequences until later, 
and assumed at once the dignities and emoluments of my 
new office. 

This action of the vestry of Trinity parish was the con- 
sequence of radical changes in the life of the rector, which 
altered his relations to St. Paul’s, and to the parish work 
in general. The vestry had a few years before sold St. 
John’s Park to the New York Central Railroad, which had 
built its freight depot on the site. The neighbourhood 
had changed so that it was no longer tenable as a home for 
the rector. The old rectory had been set apart as an in- 
firmary and hospital under the care of the Sisters of Saint 
Mary. A new rectory had been purchased on Twenty- 
fifth street, next to Trinity Chapel. To his great grief, 
Dr. Dix was compelled by the vestry to leave his home 
among the masses and take up his abode with the classes. 
Soon after his removal from the old to the new rectory, 


JUNIOR ASSISTANT MINISTER I15 


I had occasion to visit him in his brownstone front on 
Twenty-fifth Street. The butler answered my ring, ush- 
ered me into the drawing-room, where I found the rector 
sitting alone and desolate; he rose, greeted me and sat 
down again, and, sighing deeply, he said, “Mr. Crapsey, 
this is lonely magnificence’’—and it was. To relieve the 
loneliness and set off the magnificence, the rector married 
a young, charming, beautiful woman. Somehow, the Dr. 
Dix of the new rectory was never quite like the Dr.. Dix 
of the old rectory. He put me in St. Paul’s to keep alive 
his work among the people of the Chapel. Following the 
example of my rector, on the second of June, 1875, I was 
married to Adelaide Trowbridge, daughter of Marcus 
Henry and Harriet Gunn Trowbridge, of Catskill, New 
York. 


CHAPTER XIX 


A LODGING-HOUSE 


HEN Dr. Dix called at my rooms to give me 

W my commission as junior assistant minister, he 

informed me that the vestry would be pleased 
if I could find lodgings in some neighbourhood where 
there would be less noise, less dirt and better air. I sent 
my thanks to the vestry for their suggestion and assured 
them that I would give the matter consideration. But 
disinclination to change kept me where I was until mar- 
riage compelled me to follow the advice of the vestry. It 
was all very well for a man to sleep in a dark bedroom, 
to be without bath or kitchen, but for a woman this way 
of living was not to be thought of. In anticipation of 
this necessary change in my mode of life, I had rented a 
house in Van Dam Street, near Hudson. This was a 
quiet, old-fashioned neighbourhood, lying between the ex- 
tremes of poverty and riches. It was the home of clerks 
and small professional men, the rental being well within 
my means, especially as my friend, Philip Brown, junior 
assistant minister of St. John’s Chapel, had consented to 
share the house and the expense with me. 

My home was within half an hour’s walk of my office 
and there was no change in the order of my daily life. I 
spent my morning in my study; was at my desk at eleven 
to hear and dispose of applications for relief; had my 
lunch in the neighbourhood and gave up my afternoons to 
the visitation of the sick and the needy; dined at home at 
six-thirty and was back at the parish house at eight, having 

116 


A LODGING-HOUSE 117 


two or sometimes three nights a week to court the affec- 
tions of my wife and receive my friends. 

As if this ordinary parish work were not sufficient, Dr. 
Dix must find for me a new job to keep me from that 
idleness which is the Devil's opportunity. In 1873 the 
United States was the scene of a terrible commercial dis- 
aster; the sudden contraction of the currency consequent 
upon the retirement of a considerable portion of the legal 
tender notes, known as greenbacks, together with the vast 
and, for the time being, profitless investment in Western 
railways, had thrown the financial world into disorder; 
caused the failure of banks and commercial houses and had 
thrown multitudes of men out of employment, who 
thronged the streets, having neither food nor lodging. In 
the fall of 1876 this industrial and commercial depression 
was at its lowest; the people were idle and starving and 
there was fear of an uprising of the unemployed, which 
might bring the city to ruin. 

One day, in this time of distress, Dr. Dix came to my 
office, bringing with him a Mr. Herman H. Cammann, 
then a young man, later controller of Trinity parish. Dr. 
Dix, presenting this gentleman, said, “Mr. Crapsey, Mr. 
Cammann tells me that he has in Centre Street an empty 
building which he thinks the parish might use as a lodging- 
house, and for other relief work. Will you please go with 
Mr. Cammann, look over the building and see if we can 
use it?’ I bowed and went with Mr. Cammann until we 
came to his building, which was on a corner of a cross 
street opposite the prison called the “Tombs.” After sur- 
veying the building, which was four stories with a base- 
ment, I returned and reported to Dr. Dix. I said to the 
Rector, ‘“This house will give us lodgings for about three 
hundred men; playrooms for children, a rest room for 
women and a restaurant in the basement.” “Quite an 
extensive plan, Mr. Crapsey. What will it cost to get it 


118 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


under way?’ “About ten thousand dollars.” The Rec- 
tor gasped, ‘But how can we get ten thousand dollars?” 
“Ask for it.’ The Rector gave a grim smile and said, 
‘And who will do the asking?’ ‘With your permission, 
I will.’ “How?” “I will make a brief statement of the 
case, asking for contributions, have it printed and placed 
in the pews of Trinity and St. Paul’s on Sunday’’—this 
was Friday—‘and start the work as soon as I get five 
thousand dollars. May I do it?’ ‘You may.” I im- 
mediately made out my statement, signing it with my own 
name, ‘‘By the Order of the Rector.”’ The sextons placed 
these circulars in the pews of Trinity and St. Paul’s. No 
attention was called to them by the clergy, and by Wednes- 
day noon I had seven thousand five hundred dollars. 
Among these returns was a large check from John Jacob 
Astor, a warden of the parish, expressing his gratification 
that Trinity Church was going to do or try to do some 
real work downtown. He said it was high time. I ap- 
pointed George Coit treasurer of the fund. We fitted 
out the building with two hundred beds, equipped a res- 
taurant and within ten days were ready for business. We 
charged ten cents for lodging and ten cents for a meal. 
We put in shower baths which were free. We soon found 
that the demand for lodgings was so great that all thought 
of a rest room for women and a playroom for children 
must be put aside. 

I gave as much of my time as I could spare from my 
regular duties to this work. We had a man in charge 
of the lodgings and cooks in the kitchen. We ran at an 
expense of from two to three thousand dollars a month 
beyond our income from meals and beds. And we never 
failed to have the money in hand as needed. 

The men who patronized our establishment were re- 
spectable workingmen and clerks. We rigidly excluded 
the professional beggar and the drunkards. For the first 


A LODGING-HOUSE 119 


time I had brought home to my mind the direful results 
that follow a breakdown in the machinery of what we call 
civilization. Here were hundreds upon hundreds of men 
forced to idleness, reduced to want, while all around them 
was land waiting for cultivation, grains ready for the reap- 
ing and fruits for ingathering; but because the machinery 
of exchange was out of gear, the men stood helpless in the 
presence of idle land, withering grain and rotting fruit. 
I was ashamed to see these men, able and willing to work, 
waiting in rows for a bit of bread and soup to stay their 
hunger, and a common cot upon which to sleep. I had 
many talks with them and they were as puzzled as I at the 
plight in which they found themselves. 

We had many curious experiences with crooks and 
cranks; of these I will instance one. I was keeping my 
usual hour in my office in Church Street when a young fel- 
low of about twenty applied for relief; he was above the 
usual type of such men, and explained that he was of a 
good family in New Haven, but had gone wrong, lost his 
job and was down and out; would I help him? Surely; 
he could go down to our lodging-house, get a bed and 
breakfast. For how much? ‘Twenty cents. But where 
was he to get the twenty cents? Earn it. How? If in 
no other way, he could wash dishes in the restaurant. 
Very well. He went out and I followed him, watched, 
saw that he was a handy fellow and gave him a permanent 
position at the desk. We printed tickets for meals and 
lodgings, which were purchased by merchants and others 
to give to applicants for relief. 

My friend George counterfeited these tickets and 
through his pals peddled them about the city. When this 
was discovered I had to advertise the fact in the papers 
and call in all tickets, offering to redeem them at cost. 
George came to see me, professed contrition and, to pre- 
vent his arrest, I took him to my room; in the night he 


120 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

stole Mr. Brown’s overcoat, my unabridged dictionary and 
other small articles, pawned them, and very kindly mailed 
me the pawn tickets. J redeemed the articles; the police 
picked up the thief, but I declined to make a charge 
against him. ‘This went on time after time, but I believed 
there was the root of goodness in the young man and 
gave him his chance; of which he finally availed himself. 
When I last saw him, he was in an honest way of living, 
supporting a wife and children, proving the wisdom of 
the rule, which Jesus laid down, of forgiving not only till 
seven times, but until seventy times seven. 

As a consequence of this work in Centre Street, the men 
of Trinity and St. Paul’s organized the Trinity Church 
Association which ever since has carried on a relief and 
educational work in the lower part of the city. This work 
has its own buildings which are owned and supported by 
the association by voluntary offerings. This work, when 
I last knew of it, was under the supervision of the Sisters 
of Saint Mary. 

Of these women I cannot speak without sincere admira- 
tlon, reverence and affection. One of the results of the 
Catholic movement in the Church of England and in the 
Episcopal Church in the United States was the revival of 
the religious orders both of men and women, those of 
women being by far the more numerous and vigorous; 
And of these the Order of the Sisters of Saint Mary was 
first in number, quality, wealth and influence. 

This order was founded by Harriet Starr Cannon, a 
woman of a strong mind, warm heart and devoted spirit. 
Because of the death of a sister, she very early in life re- 
nounced the world and devoted herself to a life of self- 
denial and service. She was by birth and training attached 
to the Episcopal Church and began her career under the 
guidance of the saintly Dr. Muhlenberg of the Church 
of the Holy Communion. But she soon passed beyond 


A LODGING-HOUSE 1 


the teaching of this holy man and embraced the doctrines 
and practices of the Catholic school in the Anglican 
Church. Gathering a few kindred souls, she took with 
them the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience and the 
Order of the Sisters of Saint Mary came into being. This 
order grew rapidly in number, influence and wealth. The 
convent was located at Peekskill, and from there the Sis- 
ters went out upon their various works of mercy. When 
the old rectory at St. John’s Park was given over to the 
uses of an infirmary, it was placed in the charge of these 
Sisters of Saint Mary, where it was my high privilege to 
serve with them in our common work. [I visited the sick 
in the hospital, celebrated the sacrament in the chapel and 
chatted with the Sisters in the office. 

These women in all their relations were simple-hearted 
women, no nonsense about them. Sister Eleanor, who 
was in charge, was a woman of common sense, could talk 
easily on any subject and laugh at the laughable with the 
best. My marriage did not change their attitude; they 
became the sponsors and the educators of my children. 

I might say in closing that it was at my suggestion that 
the meeting of men was called which resulted in the forma- 
tion of the Trinity Church Association. And with that 
meeting I closed my relations with the work of Trinity 
parish. 


CHAPTER XX 


MY DREAM COMES TRUE 


HEN I reached my thirtieth year I awakened 

\) \) to the fact that I was drifting with the currents 

of life. So far my ministerial career had been 
a series of seemingly fortunate accidents. I had not 
shaped my destiny from within; it was the result of the 
play of external forces. As matters stood, my way lay 
plain before me. I would hold my job as junior assistant 
minister of Trinity parish until the senior assistant died 
or was retired on a pension; that he should resign was not 
within the range of possibilities. I could look forward to 
at least twenty years of subordination, when my waning 
energies would unfit me for new and constructive work. 
My relations with my immediate superior were becoming 
more and more difficult with each succeeding day. If I 
consulted him he was sure to frustrate any plan that I 
had in mind; if I did not consult him he was naturally of- 
fended. ‘This painful situation was the outcome of our 
characters and history. I was his junior in age and rank, 
but his senior in the work of Trinity parish. Before he 
came I had the work of St. Paul’s Chapel well in hand 
and this gentleman had not the energy to seize control 
and reduce me to a position of subordination. 

But even if this unfortunate condition had not existed, 
there were other considerations that made my continuance 
in Trinity parish undesirable. It was the call to preach 
that determined my entrance into the ministry of the 
Church. A junior assistant of Trinity parish preached 

122 


MY DREAM COMES TRUE 123 


only twice a month and that at the evening service of the 
various chapels. ‘This circumstance forbade his exercising 
any intellectual or spiritual influence over the minds and 
souls of the people and it bred in the man, himself, intel- 
lectual and spiritual sloth. One sermon would serve him 
for his round of the chapels. “Twelve sermons would be 
sufhcient for the year. This was starvation to the man 
who felt the call to preach. 

From the very first, even before I went to college, I had 
a vision of the future in store for me. I saw myself en- 
tering upon a work in a growing city of the second class. 
This was to be my work from the beginning; as the out- 
lines of my vision cleared I saw it as a church, free and 
open, situate in the working-class district. It was my 
thought to build that church into the community, to make 
it a centre of social activities, the preaching and the wor- 
ship to be the drawing and the driving power of this ma- 
chine. I do not say that this vision was constant and 
clear. It was often blurred by a mirage of a rich and 
fashionable parish, with a palatial rectory, the rector and 
the rectoress served by a staff of men-servants and maid- 
servants, with the mitre of the bishop as the crowning 
glory of this prosperous career. Such distinction had 
come to others; why not to me? 

But this vision would fade and I would see myself as 
the simple pastor of a simple folk, with whom I would 
work, not as a master, but as a servant. 

When I was thirty-two years of age, such an opportun- 
ity came to me in its extremest, most dangerous form. 
I had a friend in the seminary, Mr. George William 
Douglas, the son of a wealthy retired banker, who was 
at that time living in the city of Rochester, New York. 
Rochester was then a growing city of about fifty thousand 
people; it was and is in the centre of a country of great 
fertility and natural beauty. It was settled by people 


124 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


from New England who came to escape the rigour of their 
climate and the harshness of their soil, and also by men 
and women from Maryland who wished to get rid of the 
ineficiency and immorality of slave labour; there was also 
a foreign element, English, German and Irish, that gave 
to the city a highly intelligent and efficient labour force. 
The high fertility of the land and the water power fur- 
nished by the falls of the Genesee River made this a 
milling-centre and Genesee flour was known the world 
over. 

It was in this city that Mr. William Bradley Douglas 
had made his home. He was an earnest churchman and 
a devout man. He had become interested in a mission of 
the Episcopal Church in the Southern section of the city. 
He had been instrumental in developing this mission into 
the status of a parish, and it was finally so organized under 
the name of Saint Clement’s Church, which had a short 
and disastrous history. Differences had arisen between 
Mr. Douglas and Mr. Bonar, the rector of the parish, 
which came to an open break; Mr. Douglas withdrew his 
support and foreclosed a mortgage which he had placed on 
the land of the parish. The night before this foreclosure, 
Mr. Bonar and his friends removed the small frame build- 
ing from the land of Mr. Douglas to a near-by lot and 
the parish of St. Clement’s dragged on a feeble existence 
for over a year. Prior to this sad quarrel, Mr. Douglas 
had built a brick rectory and chapel, which was his private 
property. 

When Saint Clement’s Church died out, Mr. Douglas 
organized a new parish which he called Saint Andrew’s. 
It was this parish to which Mr. George William Douglas, 
then a junior assistant minister, assigned to Trinity 
Church, called my attention. He drew a graphic picture 
of this parish, with its grounds, its building, its endow- 
ment, and, as it fell in with my dream, I gave it considera- 


MY DREAM COMES TRUE 12¢ 


tion. At the instance of the son, I had an interview with 
the father and was impressed with his piety and intelli- 
gence. I consulted Dr. Dix, who simply said that the 
affairs at St. Paul’s Chapel were not satisfactory and left 
me to draw my own conclusion. I visited Mr. Douglas 
in Rochester, saw the property and talked with him as to 
his desires. But I did not do what any sane person ought 
to have done—I did not go out into the city, visit the 
clergy and make any inquiries as to the reason of the fail- 
ure of St. Clement’s and the general prospects of the 
church in that neighbourhood. 

When I returned to New York and the fact of my prob- 
able resignation became public, General John A. Dix, the 
controller of the parish, called me to his office and urged 
me not to think of leaving the parish; he intimated that 
the vestry were very dissatisfied with conditions at St. 
‘Paul’s and were contemplating radical action, and he 
wished that I would delay any action on my part until the 
vestry could decide what was best to be done. But I told 
the General that my chief reason for considering any call 
for work outside of the parish were the unsatisfactory 
conditions at St. Paul’s Chapel. I did not feel that the 
situation was fair either to myself or to the senior minis- 
ter, and if changes were to be made I did not want to be 
there to profit by them. General Dix saw the justice 
of that decision. When Bishop Potter, of New York, 
heard of my contemplated action, he wrote a letter of 
warning, in spite of which I went on to my doom. 

I resigned my position as junior assistant minister of 
Trinity parish at a salary of four thousand dollars a year, 
paid the first of every month by check on the Chemical 
National Bank, and accepted the rectorship of St. An- 
drew’s Church, Rochester, at a salary of fifteen hundred a 
year, which, when paid at all, was in the pennies of the 
collection. ‘This action ruined my professional career. 


126 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


It was naturally concluded that there must be some dis- 
graceful reason for such a foolish step. I learned later 
that I was given just one year to stay in the parish and the 
city, if so long. JI began my ministry on the first of June, 
Whitsunday, 1879. The chapel, which would seat about 
eighty people, was half full. It was trimmed with flow- 
ers in honour of the new rector. ‘The congregation con- 
sisted of a little group of English people who were more 
or less related. 

I left my wife and children with Mr. Trowbridge at 
Catskill. JI made my home in the rectory, taking my meals 
with Mr. William Dove, who happened to be my twin, 
born the same day of the same year. 

When my wife joined me on the first of July she was 
utterly cast down; the conditions seemed hopeless. ‘The 
rectory had been neglected; there was no bath, nor proper 
sanitary provisions; in nothing was my stupidity more 
manifest than in the fact that I had not seen this state of 
affairs and made its remedy a condition of my coming. 
If retreat had been possible, our stay in that parish would 
not have lasted a year or a month, or a day. But there 
we were and there we made our home for twenty-eight 
years. It was my first and only pastorate in the Episcopal 
Church. In spite of its untoward beginnings, this was in 
reality the fulfilment of my dream. I was pastor of a free 
and open church in a working-class district and it was for 
me to reduce my ideal to reality. 

Soon after my arrival in Rochester I received from Dr. 
Dix the following letter: 


“New York, June 13, 1879. 
“My DEAR Mr. Crapsey: 

“It will give you pleasure to know that at a meeting of the Vestry 
of ‘Trinity Church held on Monday last, the 9th inst., it was resolved 
that your salary should be paid to the 1st day of September next en- 
suing, although your resignation takes effect the 1st of July. This 


MY DREAM COMES TRUE ia 


order was made in view of the high appreciation of your valuable 
service in this parish since the time when you entered on your duties 
here. ‘The seven years would have been completed had you re- 
mained with us until the 1st of next September. 

“Tt gives me great pleasure to inform you of this action on the part 
of the Vestry, to assure you of the general esteem and regard in which 
you are held in this Parish and to add to these expressions my own 
best wishes and the testimony to my entire confidence in you as a 
faithful priest and a man without reproach among us in the order of 
your life. 

“Believe me to remain, 
“Very truly and faithfully yours, 
“Morcan Dix. 
“The Rev. A. S. Crapsey.” 


CHAPTER XXI 


BEGINNINGS ARE HARD 


HE despondency of which I have just made note 

was owing to that sad faculty of the genus homo 

which permits him to see before and after, so 

that his days are days of anticipation and days of regret; 

he thinks of what he has had, of what he will have, but 
seldom of what he has. 

When we came to Rochester we were full of what we 
had had, the busy days, the interesting people, the personal 
consideration—that was the harvest of our past and we 
had reaped it. We did not think that with the seed of 
that past we were to sow our present and in due time reap 
our future. 

When we were preparing to remove from New York 
to Rochester, I had in view the welcome which awaited 
our arrival. I had a vision of the people crowding to 
see and hear the distinguished man who had condescended 
to undertake the task of enlightening the dark places of 
the little city of Rochester, bringing to it the wisdom 
which he had acquired in the largest parish of the largest 
city in America. I was cast down when I saw my little 
chapel with only twoscore sheep to wait on the ministra- 
tion of the newly arrived shepherd. But I did my best. 

Following upon the stir of our life in New York, our 
new life was as a graveyard to a ballroom; we were lit- 
erally buried alive. Our nearest neighbours were Roman 
Catholics; Mr. Maloney was to the front of us; Mr. 
Daugherty was to the rear of us; Mr. Kehoe was to the 

128 


BEGINNINGS ARE HARD 129 


right of us; these good souls who belonged to the True 
Church; Saint Mary’s or Saint Boniface’s, with their con- 
gregations thronging by the thousands to the mass every 
Sunday morning, looked upon us and our little handful of 
people with compassion. As neighbours they gave us a 
kindly welcome. ‘They expected for us the fate of our 
predecessors: Mr. Flack had gone, Mr. Bonar had gone 
and we, too, would go. 

When my wife came to her new home, she was crushed 
by its utter loneliness. “The church was on a side street 
where the passage of a wagon was an event; there was no 
coming and going. Our ten families were busy; the men 
with their work in the shops, the women with their house- 
hold duties. ‘These people had no time for sociability, 
nor were they greatly interested in their church; in fact, 
they did not think of it as their church; it was Mr. Doug- 
las’ church; he had built it; he supported it; he appointed 
and dismissed the ministers. ‘This attitude of the people 
was the attitude of the church at large and of the city. 
The rector of St. Andrew’s is in a trap and let him get 
outofit it he can: 

But the day brought its duties. The children must be 
cared for; breakfast, dinner and supper must be prepared 
and eaten; tables laid and cleared away; beds made; rooms 
set in order; the few people in the parish must be visited; 
the sermon made ready for the coming Sunday; the mere 
routine of life saved us from the utter loss of our courage. 
Day followed day, each bringing its changes. Little by 
little the people of the neighbourhood came to know that 
the rectory doors were open to any need of body or soul. 
Our warden, Mr. Douglas, attentive to our comfort, had 
us to dinner now and then. I fell back on my habit of 
reading to while away the time. Strangers from various 
parts of the city would drop into our chapel of a Sunday 
morning, and they who came once were apt to come again, 


130 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


until at last the room was well filled and on high days and 
holidays it was overcrowded. 

Before the first year had passed, all thought of loneli- 
ness was lost in the stimulating stir of our new work. My 
wife and I soon recognized that this loneliness had been 
our salvation. If we had entered at once the social life 
of the city, going here and there and everywhere, we 
should never have entered into the lives of our people and 
made ourselves their servants as we were compelled to do 
in order to escape from the loneliness of our own situation. 

The slow but constant increase of the attendance upon 
the Sunday morning worship at St. Andrew’s Chapel de- 
manded additional accommodation. It was distressing 
for men and women to come from various parts of the city 
and find no welcome in this House of God. 

To remedy this state of affairs, in the spring and sum- 
mer of 1880 Mr. Douglas caused the completion of the 
church by the building of the nave, aisles and tower. ‘The 
nave was some eighty feet long; the choir and chancel were 
thirty feet, making the length of the church, as a whole, 
one hundred and ten feet. ‘The chapel, extending west- 
ward from the choir and chancel, was about sixty feet in 
length. ‘The rectory adjoining the chapel was a little more 
than fifty feet in width, facing Ashland Street. This 
group of buildings when completed were not only com- 
modious, but of singular beauty. ‘The architect was the 
younger Upjohn, who, following the lines of his father, 
the elder Upjohn, architect of Trinity Church, New York, 
revived the Gothic form of architecture in this country. 
It is true that St. Andrew’s Church was not pure Gothic 
as the clerestory was wanting, but this omission did not 
mar the general effect of the structure. When, as soon 
happened, my wife had laid out the grounds in front of 
the rectory and to the side of the church, planting a hedge- 
row between the street and the rectory grounds, placing 


/BEGINNINGS ARE HARD 131 


flowering shrubs along the side of the church with a white 
spruce in the centre of the lawn and the green sward all 
around, one could travel far and not find a lovelier sight; 
it was very English. Standing at gaze, one might imagine 
oneself in Surrey and think of English parsons and squires, 
ladies of quality and dames of high degree. 

As soon as this building was completed, it was conse- 
crated by the bishop and we emptied our congregation of 
sixty into this church which would hold five hundred, but 
what of that? If forty could become sixty, could not sixty 
become five hundred? Which it did in the course of three 
years, not that we had a congregation of five hundred 
every Sunday, but we had need of an auditorium accom- 
modating this number, and more, on high days, holidays 
and to welcome the Bishop. 

As the years went on, the work of St. Andrew’s parish 
increased, of which a full description will follow this 
chapter, until the sometime lonely corner of Ashland 
Street and Averill Avenue became one of the liveliest cor- 
ners in the city. It did not quite come up to State and 
Main Streets in its activity, but there was no outlying cor- 
ner that could rival it. We had our parish house, now our 
schoolhouse, on Hickory Street; we built a new parish 
house on Averill Avenue opposite the church. 


CHAPTER XXII 


THE PREACHER 


from loneliness to activity, we shall find that the 
primary cause was the preaching of the gospel. 
When Ezra, returning from Babylon to Jerusalem, set up 
his pulpit in the open street and began to expound the 
writings of the prophets in the ears of the people that 
surrounded him, he instituted a movement which changed 
the destiny of mankind, which destroyed empires and 
created civilizations. No power in this world is so great 
as the power of human speech, and this power of speech 
increases in efficiency with momentum. If a doctrine is 
preached and preached and preached, it will finally prevail. 
John P. Altgeldt, in his brochure on oratory, tells us that 
oratory is the greatest of all the arts because it compre- 
hends all the arts. ‘To be an orator one must be an archi- 
tect; he must be able to lay out the plan of his intellectual 
structure and build according to plan. No one who builds 
a house desires to have the front door of that house open 
directly upon the street. He desires a stairway leading 
from the street to the porch, and upon the beauty of this 
entrance lies very largely the attractiveness of the house. 
And so it is with oratory: no true orator ever plunges at 
once into the midst of his subject; he leads up to the en- 
trance door of his theme by a stairway and a portico, and 
upon the appropriateness of this introduction lies the 
charm of the speech. A wonderful instance of this archi- 


tectural feature of oratory is seen in Webster’s introduc- 
132 


[ we examine scientifically into the causes of this change 


THE PREACHER 133 


tion to his reply to Hayne. If the reader is not familiar 
with that great bit of work, let him by all means look up 
that oration and read that introduction. It is the perfec- 
tion of architectural construction. But if the porch is all 
and there is a shabby structure behind it, then the intro- 
duction hurts rather than helps what follows. The intel- 
lectual architect must have arranged his halls, his drawing- 
rooms, his dining-rooms and more especially his stairways 
so as to make them attractive to the eye and pleasing to 
the mind. They must have a logical relation, one to the 
other, and he must pay special attention to his conclusion, 
which is the roof of his intellectual architectural structure. 
When he has accomplished his task, then the orator has 
created a lasting building; a great speech lives for ever; 
it is carried on from generation to generation; it is the 
mightiest product of the mind of man, and in its propor- 
tion such every speech should be, be it made on felathon 
or in pulpit. 

But not only must the speaker be an architect, he must 
also be a painter; he must adorn the friezes of his archi- 
traves with the figures of majestic horses and still more 
majestic men; his walls must not be barren, but orna- 
mented by the skill of the artist. It is customary on the 
part of some critics to condemn what they call “flowers of 
speech.” I wonder if these wiseacres have ever taken 
thought of the purpose the flower serves. Is it not true 
and evident to the eye that the flower serves the Goddess 
of Beauty? Without the flower, we could never give 
proper expression to our grief or to our love. We send 
flowers to the wedding and we send flowers to the funeral, 
but not only do flowers thus gratify our love of the beauti- 
ful and so express our feelings of joy and grief, but they 
have a purpose of their own far more important than any 
service to ourselves. Without the flower, there would be 
no more flowers. The beauty of the flower, and espe- 


134 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


cially the fragrance, attracts the bees, and the bees, plung- 
ing into the flower in search of its sweetness, incidentally 
impregnate the stamen with the pollen of the pistils, and 
lo and behold, the flower becomes fruit; the fruit becomes 
seed; the seed becomes flower again, and so on from gen- 
eration to generation. ‘The flowers of speech serve the 
same purpose as do the flowers of the plant. ‘They at- 
tract attention. When Mr. Bryan, at the Democratic 
Convention, made his famous cross-of-gold speech, he, by 
that flower of speech, attracted the attention of the crowd 
before him and the attention of the whole world. It gave 
Mr. Bryan the leadership of the Democratic party for 
twelve years and changed the entire trend of the political 
life of the United States. 

But if an orator were merely an artist, his work would 
not have the supreme value which it possesses. The ora- 
tor, indeed every speaker, performs a miracle with each 
utterance. He bridges the seen and the unseen, the ma- 
terial and the spiritual. No one can know what is in my 
mind until I speak my mind. Every orator must be a 
philosopher, a lover of wisdom; he must have stored his 
mind with the rich material of the thought world round 
about him. No man can be a great speaker who is not a 
constant reader; nor does it matter much what he reads 
if he has the power within him to transform that reading 
into thought. He will, of course, be the greater mind ac- 
cording to the greatness of his reading, and hence it is 
that every successful orator takes care to gather his honey 
from the most magnificent of flowers. The poverty of the 
preacher cannot be hidden from the congregation. Every 
scribe instructed in the Kingdom of Heaven brings out of 
his treasures things new and old; mere repetition is not 
the work of a man, but of a parrot. 

But the nobility of oratory lies in its purpose, which is 
to build the Truth into the lives of men; hence it is that 


THE PREACHER 135 


the prophet is also a seer, and each prophet must tell what 
he sees, no more, no less. No prophet can ever see the 
whole, but every prophet sees an important part. The 
task of the prophet is to destroy and to build. Before 
you can build a city, you must destroy the wilderness. It 
is mere ignorance that says, “I will not destroy; I will only 
build.”” You cannot so much as lay the foundation of a 
house until you have destroyed the surface of the soil. 
When Jehovah gave His commission to the prophet Jere- 
miah, He said, “I have set thee to pluck up, to root out, 
to overthrow, to destroy, to plant, and to build”; four 
words for destruction, two for construction; the destruc- 
tive work is always the more important at the beginning; 
the constructive follows hard upon it. 

I have presumed to give this long dissertation upon the 
principles of oratory because it was by means of this great 
power that we built up, primarily, the congregation of St. 
Andrew’s parish. The orator is primarily a speaker, not 
a reader. No man can ever do his best work with a pub- 
lic audience who reads from a manuscript; he must always 
be eye to eye with his congregation. He must hold their 
attention, not only by the power of his words, but by the 
force of his will; the dual mind, the subjective and the 
objective, must be constantly at work. The subjective 
under the control of the objective; if this relation is once 
lost, the speaker is gone. 

Remembering the advice of Bishop Potter, my Sunday 
morning sermon was twenty minutes, with a leaning to 
mercy. I prepared these sermons after a manner of my 
own. In the early part of the week I would choose my 
subject and find for it the proper text. I would store these 
away in the subjective mind, and that mind would mull 
over the theme during the week; I paid no attention to it; 
but I had acquired the habit of meditation, and as [I 
walked about the streets of the city I would be in the pos- 


136 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


session of my subjective rather than my objective mind. I 
formed a habit of walking with my eyes fixed about 
twenty feet in front of me on the ground; a most per- 
nicious habit. Because of it I failed to cultivate the habit 
of recognizing faces on the street, a serious defect in a 
clergyman. 

When Sunday morning came I went into my church for 
about an hour before the service and arranged the struc- 
ture of the sermon, its introduction, its body, its conclusion. 
My sermons were pastoral in their nature; they were in- 
tended to give my people food for thought during the 
week, which thought would naturally influence their lives. 
The sermons were always spoken. When I left the pulpit 
I left with my people my sermon. By me it was instantly 
forgotten or else stored down in the depths of my subcon- 
scious mind. It was these sermons that primarily gave 
to St. Andrew’s its place in the city, but if we had been 
content with sermons alone our church would not have had 
the influence which it came to exercise over the life of the 
city, and of the world at large. 


CHAPTER XXIII 


THE PASTOR 


HE Jewish Synagogue evolved the great office of 
the preacher; the Christian Church developed the 
functions of the pastor; the office of the preacher 
has to do with the intelligence primarily; he instructs his 
people in the principles of right living and he also inspires 
the heart with the desire to do the things that the preacher 
has commanded. ‘The office of the pastor is to minister 
to the temporal and spiritual needs of the individual; the 
preacher deals with congregations, with crowds; he iso- 
lates himself, standing above his hearers; he reaches them 
by the power of his voice. ‘The pastor deals with indi- 
viduals and the hand is the symbol of his office; he must 
give to his flock not only instructions, but material aid 
and comfort. This brings him in contact with the deeper 
life of the people; the personal griefs and sins are made 
known to him in order that he may apply the proper rem- 
edies for the cure of the evil. The work of the preacher 
is in the church; that of the pastor in the home and the 
street. 

It was by the exercise of this office of the pastor that 
St. Andrew’s Church acquired the influence which it ex- 
ercised over the life of the individual and of the commu- 
nity. It was our thought that we were the ministers—that 
is, the servants—of the people, and that it was our duty 
to give to them the best that we had, even to our life. 
Every worker must assume the risk of his work; if he be 
a soldier, he must face the cannon; his life must not be held 

137 


138 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


dearly by him; he must be ready to throw it away. A 
pastor must in the same way be ready to go into any house, 
no matter if at the time it be the home of pestilence. If, 
as in a given case, there is diphtheria in a home, the pas- 
tor of the church must go there, not only to make a formal 
visit, but, if need be, to enter into the sick chamber and 
assist in the care of the patient. When I first went to the 
city of Rochester the sanitary conditions in our neighbour- 
hood were wretched and the disease of diphtheria was 
prevalent. I recall one instance where I went to the home 
of one of my parishioners, a widower, and found him 
struggling with three children who were under the power 
of this dread disease. I did not hesitate to stay with 
that man day and night until that trouble was overcome. 
The three children died, but we were able, by using proper 
methods, to save the rest of the family; nor in doing such 
a thing as this did I go beyond my simple duty as a pastor; 
the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep. 

It might be said that while the pastor has the right to 
risk his own life, it is not incumbent upon him to entail the 
like risk upon his wife and children, but in the case of the 
pastor, as of the physician, the family must take the risks 
of the head of the household. To illustrate this principle, 
I will use the legend of the “overcoat.” It is a little out 
of order, but we will anticipate events and make use of 
a scene in my heresy trial. In the course of that trial, 
one of my counsel, in order to gain the favour of the court 
on the plea of good character, told the court that at one 
time I had taken off my overcoat and had given it to a 
poor, shivering man upon the street. This argument 
was played up by all the newspapers and made an im- 
pression upon the community, marking me as one who 
would give his overcoat to a stranger. ‘This legend has 
grown with time, as all legends do, until now I am pretty 
well known throughout the world as a giver of overcoats. 


THE PASTOR 139 


In an account of my life published in a Boston magazine, 
itis said: “It was told of him that he had such a way of 
giving his overcoat to any unfortunate man whom he saw 
cold and shivering in the blasts of winter that the precinct 
police captain notified his men to be on the watch, and if 
they saw ‘the little Father,’ as he was familiarly called, 
bestowing his ulster on some pretending rascal, they were 
to rescue it and secretly return it to the rectory.” 

This illustrates the law of the growth of legends. The 
little seed produces the plant. If this story were true to 
the letter, the bestower of the overcoats must either have 
unlimited wealth to purchase overcoats, or else he must 
have the power to multiply overcoats as the Lord multi- 
plied the loaves and the fishes. Neither of these condi- 
tions existed in the case under consideration. I never had 
but one overcoat at any given time, and if I were to give 
that away there would be some difficulty in replacing it, 
and I certainly could not go the next day and give an over- 
coat to another man, nor did I possess any miraculous 
power of calling overcoats into existence by the waving of 
the wizard’s wand. A third version of this story has 
within the few days of this writing been published in a 
little periodical in the city of Rochester. This new ver- 
sion is as follows: ‘Dr. Crapsey met upon the street one 
night a poor fellow shivering with the cold, who told a 
poor-luck story, how he was out of work and wanted to 
get home to his people, that he lived about a hundred miles 
away, and the little rector took off his overcoat and put it 
on the shivering rascal, took him into a lunchroom, gave 
him his meal, went down to the railroad and bought him 
his ticket, and sent him home.” Now, all this might pos- 
sibly be true, but the person of whom it is told has no 
recollection of it. I am not aware that I ever took off my 
overcoat and gave it to a person on the street; my wife 
tells me that I did and that, as a consequence, I had 


140 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


typhoid pneumonia and was near unto death. I use this 
as a parable to illustrate the character of the true pastor. 
If I had done all of these things, I should simply have been 
following the teaching and the example of my Great 
Master, who not only gave His overcoat, but gave His 
life for the people. It was my bounden duty to share all 
that I had with those that were in need; that I did do it 
is another matter. JI make no such claim. I never did 
any more than, probably not half so much as, every pastor 
ought to do for his people, but we did so serve the people 
that we won their affection. 

I always considered it my duty to visit the prisons, the 
asylum, and to minister as far as possible to the needs of 
the people in those institutions. We were organized for 
that purpose. I often made of my church a sanctuary; 
some poor man or woman who had transgressed the law, 
usually the law against property, being hunted by the po- 
lice, would come to our church and take sanctuary, and they 
would have refuge there until we could examine into the 
case and if possible secure its settlement without any pub- 
lic exposure of the offender. I am convinced by long ex- 
perience that we could almost abolish our present penal 
system if we would have our courts administer charity in- 
stead of justice. It has been well said that if justice were 
strictly administered no man would escape a whipping, and 
very few of us would keep out of jail. The men who are 
caught are the men who suffer, and when once a man is in 
the grasp of the penal system he seldom escapes it. Mr. 
Osborne has well said that ‘‘Every criminal sentence is a 
sentence for life.” 

In the pastoral work of the Protestant minister, the wife 
exercises the virtues and the duties of the Sister of Mercy. 
The pastoral work of St. Andrew’s Church had its inspira- 
tion not so much in the heart of the rector as in that of the 
rector’s wife. She was so constituted that she could de- 


THE PASTOR 141 


tect, as a hound detects, almost by smelling, the needs of 
our people. Her work was organized for the purpose of 
supplying these wants that she thus discovered. She al- 
ways had on hand the garments that might be called for in 
any crisis. She had layettes ready for the unborn children. 
She had clothing for the growing child; dresses for the 
women and second-hand, but well-repaired, garments for 
the men. If there was any giving away of overcoats, I 
was sure that it was from this treasure-house that they were 
taken, and this ingrained habit has followed this woman 
throughout her lite. 

The ministration to the spiritual needs of the individual 
is a duty of the pastor, but of that he can never speak. 
It is a great mistake to suppose that the habit of confes- 
sion is confined to the Catholic Church and is made only to 
the priests in the confessional. Confession is a necessity 
of the soul and it is given by the penitent to the person 
whom that penitent can trust. As a High Churchman, I 
believed in the priestly power to forgive sins and heard 
many formal confessions, almost entirely from women, and 
I soon discovered that these formal confessions were of 
very little value. It was a confession, not really of sin, 
but of virtue. It had to do with inner feelings rather than 
with outward acts, and it was a mere formal matter. The 
confession was made; penance and absolution were given, 
and that was the end of it. Real confessions are made 
under the stress of danger; the man or the woman has 
committed a sin and the consequences of that sin are upon 
him or her, and the confession is made for the purpose of 
receiving counsel that will enable the penitent to escape 
from the immediate peril. Sometimes confessions are 
made simply to ease the conscience. Such confessions will 
be told in the way of casual conversation. A clergyman 
once told me that he heard a confession of adultery which 
involved the suicide of the wronged husband, and this reve- 


142 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


.ation was made to him at a reception. ‘The sinner came 
and sat down beside him and in a low tone, as if she were 
gossiping with him, laid bare to him this inner secret of 
her heart. The office of confessor is a necessary one, but 
I doubt if it has any great value when it is exercised in a 
merely formal manner. The Christian ministry has al- 
ways exercised this office and it will be a great loss to the 
world should there be no established order of men to 
whom can be confided the secrets of the soul. The man 
who exercises this office must command the confidence of 
the people. If he has no reserve, is a tittle-tattle, no one 
will ever whisper in his ear the secret things of the soul. 
It was in the exercise of this office that the best of my work 
was done. My preaching, I hope, brought light to the 
intelligence and fervour to the heart. My pastoral of- 
fice, I trust, has brought peace to many a soul, and it was 
in the exercise of this pastoral office that the influence of 
St. Andrew’s parish was gained over the lives of individ- 
uals and affected the condition of the city at large. 


CHAPTER XXIV 


THE PRIEST 


HE minister of the Protestant Episcopal Church 
combines in his personality the three offices of 
prophet, priest and king. The prophet pro- 
claims to the people the Word of God; the king rules the 
people with his pastoral staff; the priest guides the people 
in the worship of God; and of these three functions that 
of the priest is by far the most ancient and, in the history 
of religion, the most important. 

As far back as we can trace the presence of mankind 
on the earth, so far can we trace the institution of the 
priesthood. In the lowest form of savagery the priest ap- 
pears as the wizard and the medicine man. In those days 
there were no insane asylums because those whom we now 
call insane were reckoned to be the special servants of the 
gods; the voices which the clairaudient heard were the 
voices of the gods. 

In the ancient family the father was prophet, priest and 
king. It was the duty of the father before each meal to 
offer libations to the gods of the house; it was his function 
year by year to walk the bounds of his lands and, by the 
sacrifice of the lamb or the he-goat, to propitiate the gods 
of the land; when he entered the bridal chamber he, as 
the high priest of the house, called down the blessings of 
the gods on the bridal bed. When the family evolved into 
the State, the priesthood devolved on the magistrate. 
Cesar’s first important political success was his election 


to the high-priesthood. 
143 


144 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


In the earliest period of Hebrew history the priesthood 
of the father was the rule. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
each offered sacrifices to Jehovah. When the children of 
Abraham evolved into the ten tribes of Israel, the priest- 
hood vested in the elders of Israel; when the religion was 
established in law and custom with its temple and rites, 
then a single tribe was chosen to the office of the priest- 
hood and the offices of king and prophet were exercised 
independently of the priesthood. 

When the Christian Church emerged from the Jewish 
Synagogue, it established the priesthood in the people; 
every Christian was a priest, and as St. Gregory says, “His 
only altar was his own heart, his only sacrifice his good 
deeds.” ‘The worship of the primitive Church was not 
sacrificial; it called for no priest. Justin Martyr, describ- 
ing these meetings of the early Christians, says, “‘When 
they came together the leader, or bishop, presided; some- 
one appointed for the occasion read from the memoirs of 
Christ; some elder preached from this Scripture and at the 
close the bishop blessed and distributed to the people bread 
and wine in commemoration of the last supper of Jesus 
and His Disciples.” 

When the primitive Church evolved into the Catholic 
Church, it partially paganized Christianity; its ministers 
became priests, its sacrifice of the mass was a refined imi- 
tation of the sacrifice of animals on the pagan altar; its 
priests were set apart from the people; they were the holy 
men standing between the sinful people and a holy God. 
The worship of God was no longer centred in the human 
heart offering its own contritions and aspirations, it was a 
highly elaborated ceremonial with procession, lights and 
music, with priest robed in bejewelled chasuble with acolyte 
going before, carrying the cross, and acolyte following 
after, bearing the train of the priest. This form of pa- 
ganized Christianity culminated in the twelfth century in 


THE PRIEST 145 


the supremacy of the Pope and the building of the 
cathedrals. 

It was this form of paganized Christianity that was 
revived by Keble, Pusey and Newman in the middle of the 
nineteenth century. It was this form of paganized Chris- 
tianity that captured my youthful imagination and carried 
me along in the sweep of its enthusiasm. Let the reader 
remember that this was paganized Christianity. The 
Christian conception of life, of God, of man, was still 
there, only disguised by these pagan robes. The great 
leaders of the movement were profoundly Christian; it 
was only in the next generation that the robes were mag- 
nified above the life. 

When I entered upon my pastorate at St. Andrew’s 
Church, I was, I trust, ruled primarily by the Christian 
conception of religion as defined by St. James, who tells us 
that true religion and undefiled before God and the Father 
is this, to visit the fatherless and the widow in their afflic- 
tion and to keep himself unspotted from the world. ‘This 
saint defines religion in terms of social service and personal 
integrity, and in my heart of hearts, so did I, but I also 
loved the pagan beauty—and why not? ‘They are not 
irreconcilable. 

As a Catholic Christian, I observed the fasts and the 
feasts, dressed the church in the colours of the seasons, 
had low mass in the morning and high mass at noon. 

At first, these ceremonials were lacking in the essential 
of good music. We had a cabinet organ and our singers 
were untrained. My friend, Mr. Henry Crabb, did the 
best he could with the assistance of my wife, with the mate- 
rial at hand, but that best did not go far. In the second 
year of my incumbency, Mr. Henry Brookes Ellwanger 
became a member of the parish and volunteered to under- 
take the combined work of organist and choirmaster. 
With this event, our church entered upon that development 


146 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


of the musical and ritualistic phase of its life that was a 
strong factor in attracting and holding a congregation. 

The one great drawback to a boy choir is the boy. 
Dear reader, did you ever know a bad boy? Well, take 
that boy, multiply him by x, and you have a faint approach 
to achoir boy. ‘These boys drove me to swearing and my 
wife to tears; they drove the neighbourhood to distraction. 
In the course of our history a large fraction of the male 
population of our city passed through our choir. As I see 
them to-day, judges of courts, professors in colleges, physi- 
cians of renown, I am lost in wonder that out of such be- 
ginnings such endings should come. Let me say here that 
I loved my worship as I loved my preaching and my pas- 
toral work. I have no apology to offer for any of these 
and I love them still. 


CHAPTER XXV 


THE CONGREGATION 


Pr “Qu Catholic and the Protestant Churches differ es- 
sentially in the composition of their congrega- 
tions. The Catholic Church has for ages been 

an imperial democracy. ‘The priests rule the church, but 
the priests are taken directly from the people; a peasant 
may and often has become a Pope. Because of this, you 
see the people, the rich and the poor, thronging the Cath- 
olic churches. It is their church and they love it. 

The Protestant Churches have from the beginning been 
aristocratic and middle-class republics. “The Reformation 
was primarily the work of the princes of North Germany. 
Luther was the spokesman of the princes. When the 
peasants of Germany asked for a share in the new free- 
dom, the princes turned upon them and slaughtered them by 
the thousands, and Luther blessed the princely butchers. 
Because of this the Protestant denominations are the reli- 
gious expression of class distinctions. The Episcopal, 
Presbyterian and Lutheran denominations comprise the 
ruling class in Germany, England, Scotland and America; 
the Baptists and Methodists, the middle class; the work- 
ing class never has, does not now, and never will become 
an important element in the Protestant denominations. 

In this respect, St. Andrew’s Church, in Rochester, was 
a Catholic and not a Protestant Church; it came in time 
to comprehend in its membership all social classes from 
the highest to the lowest; the rich and the poor on equal 


terms. ‘The church, itself, was free and open; no one had 
147 


148 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


any right to any special seat; the first comer could sit 
where he willed and the later comers had to respect his 
right of possession. If in a special case a seat came to be 
set apart for special persons, that was by the courtesy of 
the congregation; the occupant never secured a right to a 
seat. I was once told that when I was under consideration 
as a possible rector for a vacant parish, it was remarked, 
“Don’t talk with Crapsey, he will never come here, he 
sees millions walking up his aisles every Sunday’’; which 
was true and not true. We did have in our congregation 
men and women of high social standing and great wealth, 
but when they came under the roof-tree of St. Andrew’s 
Church, neither their social standing nor their wealth 
counted. ‘The richest and the highest were only as one of 
the people and they loved to have it so. ‘The only dif- 
ference between these and the others was their greater 
power of service, and even here we were careful to keep 
our expenses within the limits of the least of the people. 

In the heyday of our history, when we were the fourth 
parish in number of communicants in the diocese of west- 
ern New York, our budget was only $7500. Of this 
$3000 went to the rector with his rectory; $1000 to the 
curate with his lodging; $2000 to the choir; $800 to the 
sexton; $700 for expenses. 

But this did not limit the generosity of the people; they 
gave freely in support of the works of the parish and of 
the Church at large; they built a parish house; they sup- 
plemented the salaries of the rector and the curate by gen- 
erous and constant gifts, and they lavished their wealth 
upon the adornment of their house of worship. I had a 
great advantage in St. Andrew's Church in that I called 
the people; they did not call me. With the exception of 
twenty-five or thirty persons, who were members of the 
congregation on the day that I assumed charge of the 
parish, every attendant upon our worship and worker in 


THE CONGREGATION 149 


our church had come to the church after the date of my 
arrival. There could be no dissatisfaction, for a dissatis- 
fied person need not come. There were no pew rentals, 
no pledges, no one ever owed the church a cent. The 
church might, and frequently did, owe the rector, but the 
rector had no security whatever for that debt. If after 
attending a while upon the ministrations of St. Andrew’s 
Church, one did not care for such ministrations, all one 
had to do was to stay away; that was the end of the whole 
matter. It was never my custom to rush out immediately 
after the close of divine worship and give to the departing 
congregation the ‘‘glad hand.” ‘That would have seemed 
to me then, as it does now, a very cheap way of endeavour- 
ing to ingratiate oneself into the goodwill of the attendants 
at the church. ‘They ought to be left to depart with the 
blessing of the church upon their heads, with the teachings 
of the church in their hearts. The intrusion of the person- 
ality of the minister at that time was an impertinence; he 
had done his part, now let God do the rest. In the course 
of six years we had a communicant list of over five hundred 
and a membership list of nearly one thousand including the 
children, and the clergy always had enough to do taking 
care of those who were glad of their ministrations. We 
did not have to coax; we compelled the people to come in, 


CHAPTER XXVI 


OUR INSTITUTIONS 


copal Church began to emerge from its sabbatical 

seclusion and its social exclusion and to interest itself 
in what was going on during the six days of the week down 
in the slums of the city. When it did wake up, it found 
itself living in the midst of a seething mass of poverty, 
ignorance and wickedness; all calling, if not for absolute 
cure, at least for grave alleviation, if the Church were to 
survive and civilization to endure. 

To meet this situation, the Institutional Church came 
into existence and a new type of clergyman was evolved. 
He was no longer the pale student of the study; he was 
the alert business man of the office; he did not button his 
collar behind, he jerked it round in front, left his waist- 
coat unbuttoned and went to work. 

The avatar of this revolution was Dr. William R. Rains- 
ford, rector of St. George’s Church, New York. Rains- 
ford was an Englishman who was imported to New York 
from Toronto, Canada. St. George’s was one of the 
wealthiest churches in the city. Among its parishioners 
were such men as John Pierpont Morgan and Seth Low; 
these men saw that their church was dying of dry rot. 
They called Rainsford to remedy this evil; he came and 
made of St. George’s a beehive of industry. He had or- 
ganizations without number; he made his church free and 
open seven days in the week; he had societies for men and 


boys, for women and girls, for study and singing, for 
150 


[° the last quarter of the nineteenth century the Epis- 


OUR INSTITUTIONS I$! 


work and play. He was a Broad-Churchman and his 
broadness included humanity. This conception of the 
Church, however, was not confined to the Broad Church 
school; it was embraced with religious ardour by the high- 
est of the Ritualists. 

When I came to Rochester, I not only had a free and 
open church but I also possessed a free and open field for 
work. I was without a congregation, Sunday school or 
any other instrument for parochial work, and this was in 
my favour. During my first summer, having nothing else 
to do, I gathered the children together on Saturday after- 
noons in my chapel for nature study; I taught them the 
function of the root and the leaf and the power of the 
seed; we went out into the fields and gathered the various 
plants and studied their structure. I remember distinctly 
that one afternoon when I was engaged in this work a 
clergyman called upon me to welcome me to the diocese. 
I afterward learned from this same clergyman that he was 
greatly offended because I did not leave my class and visit 
with him, but in my business training I learned this much 
at least: work in worktime; play in playtime. 

When the fall came and the congregation began to 
gather, I organized, as a matter of course, the Sunday 
school, and God forgive me for doing so. Of all institu- 
tions devised by the foolishness of man, the modern Sun- 
day school is the most foolish and futile. It attempts the 
impossible; it accomplishes the immoral; it tries to teach 
to little children the most abstract philosophic proposi- 
tions that the human mind can entertain. It speaks to its 
little ones of Unities and Trinities, Incarnations and 
Eternities. Now, these words, like the word ‘‘fraction,” 
convey to the mind of the child no thought whatever; it is 
simply a sound, but this is the lesser sin. The Church 
dares to take these little minds and teach to them its opin- 
ions for absolute Truth; it says to the little ones, ‘“‘You 


152 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

must believe without wavering, and throughout your whole 
life, these things that I am now teaching; never mind 
whether you understand them or not, you must believe 
them.’”’ Once a Catholic priest asked from his class a 
definition of faith. A little girl answered, ‘‘Faith is that 
gift of God whereby we believe things that are not so.” 
Not all children, nor even grown folks, have the wit of 
this Catholic child; what they have learned at that vener- 
able institution, the mother’s knee, they think a religious 
duty to hold to for the rest of their lives. - 


OUR SCHOOLS 


But I was sufficiently the disciple of Kingsley, Maurice 
and Rainsford to know that the Sunday school was not 
the ultimate source of knowledge in all that pertained to 
the well-being of human life. When Mr. Douglas had 
built his parish house, he established there a Dames’ 
School and he employed two lovely ancient ladies to teach 
that school, but there was no call for such an institution 
in our time or vicinity. ‘The public schools were taking 
children at the earliest possible school age and deforming 
their intelligence by attempting to teach them to read and 
to spell, so within the year the Dames’ School died an early 
and a peaceful death. In the following year I secured the 
services of an accomplished kindergartner, Katherine 
Whitehead by name, and we set up in our parish building 
a kindergarten and a training-school for kindergartners. 
In this enterprise we were a long step ahead of our time 
and place. Rochester had then but one very feeble kin- 
dergarten instructed by a half-trained teacher. Within 
a year, owing to the genius of Mrs. Whitehead, our school 
had a class of about a dozen young women in training 
and we had so many applications for pupils that we had to 
occupy the whole building upstairs and down. We car- 
ried on this work for about twelve years, when the com- 


OUR INSTITUTIONS 153 
munity caught up to us and the Board of Education estab- 
lished kindergartens in various parts of the city and opened 
a free class for the training of kindergartners. As we 
supported our work by the fees that the pupil-teachers paid 
for their training, we were compelled to abandon our en- 
terprise. Our commencement exercises were always an 
event in the city; the mayor of the city, or some equally 
prominent person, would make the address, and the church 
would be crowded with the friends of the pupils and of the 
school. Our last commencement was a very sad occasion. 
I think the mayor made the address, or if he did not, it 
was some equally important person, and the speaker con- 
gratulated the city on the fact that this institution had 
blazed the way in educational science and practice, which 
way the city had wisely followed. With many tears, we 
closed with the blessing of God, and now the city of 
Rochester has no superior in this field of work. 

Besides our kindergarten, we had evening schools with 
paid teachers in the mechanical arts; we taught the girls 
sewing and embroidering, also knitting; the boys, wood- 
carving, carpentry and engraving on brass. ‘These schools 
were held in the parish house in the evening, and they were 
very useful to the community and largely patronized by 
the neighbourhood. Many and many a boy had his start 
in our night school, from which he went forth to become 
an engraver, a carpenter, a painter. The boys and the 
girls were, as a matter of course, together in the school 
during the school hours. Our teacher, having a nice sense 
of propriety, dismissed the girls about fifteen minutes be- 
fore he dismissed the boys. He continued this for a time 
until one of the boys said to him, “Mr. Robinson, I think 
this is a dandy school, but there is one thing I don’t like 
about it.” Mr. Robinson inquired, “And what is that?” 
The boy replied with a question, “Don’t you think, Mr. 
Robinson, that the boys are better able to stand out in 


154: THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

the cold for fifteen minutes than the girls?’ Mr. Rob- 
inson thought a moment and he said, “I believe they are.” 
And from that time the boys and the girls went out to- 
gether, and Cupid laughed. 


OUR WORK 


As a matter of course, we had the usual, ordinary insti- 
tutions of a parish: ‘The chief of these was St. Hilda’s 
Guild. I suppose it can be said of every parish that in it 
is a small group of women who are unfailing in their ef- 
fort to uphold the rector in his work. St. Andrew’s was 
no exception to this rule. From July 1st, 1879—the 
morning we reached Rochester and found a delicious 
breakfast prepared for us in the rectory and fresh flowers 
planted in the garden—until the time came for us to be 
separated from them, our parish women were loyal and 
splendid in bearing the burden of parish work, carrying 
out our plans and caring for the church. 

St. Hilda’s Guild did what the old-fashioned ‘Dorcas 
Society” did in days gone by. Clothing was made and 
sent out in case of sickness or distress. ‘The meetings 
were held once a week and for many years were guided 
by the rector’s wife. Later on, Miss Louise Olmstead 
carried on much the same work under the name of 
‘Mothers’ Meetings.” A short time after we started 
the work among the women, Mrs. Crapsey, judging by 
her own busy nursery that any help or encouragement 
given young mothers would be invaluable to the mother 
and of great comfort to the baby, began sending out little 
garments as they were needed. St. Hilda’s Guild made 
the clothing and they were arranged in a box, and many a 
tired mother was heartened up by the little act of love. 
The first person outside of the guild to appreciate the value 
of our maternity work was Marie Louise Atkinson, then 
a young girl. In later years she has done many lovely acts 


OUR INSTITUTIONS 166 
both in public and private, but the spirit that prompted 
the sending of a basket beautifully covered with chintz, in 
which she laid a knitted blanket made by her own hands, 
was quite unusual on the part of a young woman who knew 
nothing about the weariness of getting ready for the new 
baby. This basket was sent to the rectory and in it St. 
Hilda’s Guild laid their offering of little garments and then 
it was given the mother. That work went on for years 
and even after the Church had closed its doors against us. 
A simple work, but full of love; and a factory that now is 
giving work to a group of women day after day owes its 
life to the little seed that was planted by loving hands in 
St. Andrew’s. 


OUR BROTHERHOOD 


Every minister knows that it is much easier to organize 
the women than it is the men. The women are naturally 
subservient; for ages they have been taught obedience. 
They are taught it at the mother’s knee; they are taught 
it at the altar and, so trained, they are naturally easy to 
command. Let him who has not tried it, try it. It is 
this fact that makes the church so dependent upon its 
women. This difficulty met me at the threshold of my 
work at St. Andrew’s parish. I had the women in order, 
but the men were still footloose. There are two motives 
that appeal strongly to men; the social motive and the 
economic. Men love to get together to eat and drink and 
smoke, and they also must keep an eye on finance because 
the man has to pay. I early grasped this thought and saw 
if I were to organize my men, I must do so upon these 
fundamental principles; I must give the organization a 
base in sociability and economy, and so I set about to 
establish a Mutual Benefit Society, which I called the St. 
Andrew’s Brotherhood. ‘The conception was not orig- 
inal; nothing is ever original; all anyone can do is to apply 


156 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 
an old conception to a new situation. [ had already or- 
ganized such a society and left it behind me in St. Paul’s 
Chapel, New York. I proposed it to my men and they 
said, “Oh, yes.” And when’ I\called a meeting; ‘about 
three men came. We resolved to form such a society and 
adjourned until a following day. That day was in melon 
time and out of my slender purse I bought a certain num- 
ber of watermelons and sent out a postal to about fifty 
men of my own church and others and invited them to a 
melon feast; about forty-five of them came. We then and 
there renewed our resolve to found the St. Andrew’s 
Brotherhood. The membership in that Brotherhood was 
not to be limited to the membership of St. Andrew’s or any 
other church; it was not to be based in religious belief, 
but in human brotherhood. Every man who would be a 
brother, could be a brother. We called it St. Andrew’s 
Brotherhood because, as you may call to mind, when St. 
Andrew found Jesus he went and found his brother Simon 
and brought him to Jesus. All we asked of the men was 
that they should have the brotherly heart; we based it 
upon the mutual benefit principle; every man was to pay 
into the treasury ten cents a week and out of that treasury 
he was to receive, in case of sickness, five dollars a week; 
in case of his death, his widow was to receive fifty dol- 
lars, and in case of the death of his wife, the member was 
to receive twenty-five dollars. Later, for practical rea- 
sons, the benefit for the first week was limited to one dol- 
lar and after that the benefit was five dollars for thirteen 
weeks and two dollars and a half thereafter. We re- 
solved not to pay any money out in benefits until we had 
accumulated one hundred dollars in our treasury. It took 
us three years to gather together that sum. ‘Then we be- 
gan the payment of benefits according to rule and we have 
continued to pay them ever since. 

St. Andrew’s Brotherhood still exists as one of the lead- 


OUR INSTITUTIONS 1$7 
ing institutions of its kind in the city of Rochester. I do 
not know the exact sum which it has paid out in benefits 
during this forty-two years of its existence, but I am quite 
sure that it is somewhere between seventy and one hundred 
thousand dollars, and I know that it has to date between 
eight and nine thousand dollars in its treasury. St. An- 
drew’s Brotherhood did not confine its beneficial work to 
its membership; it constantly contributed to the needs of 
the community; to any object that commended itself to ‘its 
approval. It is to-day a great power for good in the city 
of Rochester. Although it was the child of what was once 
known as a ritualistic church, it has no ornate ritual of its 
own; its initiation ceremonies are very simple. ‘The rec- 
tor of St. Andrew’s Church is, ex officio, chaplain of the 
Brotherhood, but he exercises no other authority. The 
Brotherhood rules itself, elects its own officers, adminis- 
ters its own affairs. It has been indebted through all these 
years to St. Andrew’s parish for its meeting hall, and it in 
turn has made St. Andrew’s parish known in every corner 
of the city of Rochester. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


RETREATS AND QUIET DAYS 


s I was then a member of the Catholic school in 
aN the Church, I was invited by the Mother Superior 
of the Sisters of St. Mary to conduct a retreat for 
the associates of the Order in the Convent of the Sister- 
hood at Peekskill, New York. I accepted this invitation 
as a call to a new and higher order of work. A recent 
sickness seemed to me a preparation for this sacred duty. 
The retreat has always been a discipline of the Catholic 
Church. Before young men are admitted into holy or- 
ders they are called into retreat, that by the practice of 
silence, meditation and confession they may search their 
hearts and see whether or not they are ready to give them- 
selves to the service of God and man in the Church. ‘The 
priesthood is not a profession; it is a calling. A man en- 
ters it, not to gain a livelihood, but as a way of service. 
He is to minister to the people of the things of God. This 
should be the underlying principle of all callings; the law- 
yer should minister to the people of the things of justice; 
the physician of the things of health; the merchant of the 
goods of life; but only in the priesthood is the ministry 
recognized as the primary motive. ‘The clergyman is a 
minister. The retreat follows immediately upon the 
graduation from the seminary that by self-examination the 
neophyte may know his own soul; by confession may dis- 
cover his sins, and by absolution may be loosed from his 
bonds. Not only does the priest enjoy this discipline at 


the time of his ordination, but he makes use of the retreat 
158 


RETREATS AND QUIET DAYS 159 
throughout his priesthood for the refreshment and recrea- 
tion of his soul. 

The retreat is the privilege of the women as well as the 
men, of the laity as well as of the priesthood. Everyone 
needs from time to time to withdraw from the world; to 
enter into the silence and take account of stock, and this 
is especially the need of our modern life, with its worry 
and hurry, rushing us through life without giving us leisure 
to know what life is. The revival of this practice in -the 
Episcopal Church was one of the blessings of the Catholic 
movement in that Church. 

When one enters into retreat he enters as far as possible 
into the seclusion of his own soul. Silence is the law of 
the retreat. Silence as one lies down and as one rises up; 
silence at table and silence in the house. ‘The only voice 
the retreatant hears is the voice of the conductor, and the 
voice of the conductor is to the retreatant the voice of 
God. 

The value of a retreat lies with the conductor; if he has 
within him the sevenfold Spirit of God, the spirit of wis- 
dom, and knowledge and ghostly strength, then his spirit 
will rule the retreat to the profit of those who are in re- 
treat. The conductor exercises his functions by means of 
the eucharist, the instruction, the mediation and the ad- 
dress, all of which are given in public to the whole body 
of the retreatants. It is also his duty to meet each re- 
treatant in private for confession, consultation, absolution 
and advice. 

In the celebration of the eucharist, the conductor exer- 
cises the purely priestly function; he is mediating between 
God and man, praying to the Lord God to forgive the sins 
of His people and to admit them into His holy presence. 
The power of prayer can never be destroyed; it inheres in 
the universe. ‘Ask and ye shall receive’; a man who does 
not pray is a man who does not live in any true sense of 


160 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the term. Prayer is the breath of the soul. We breathe 
in the necessities of the spiritual life, and out of the spirit- 
ual life proceed all the issues of life and death, so that in 
offering the oblation upon the altar, the minister is seek- 
ing to clear the way for the union of the individual soul 
with the oversoul. 

In his instruction the conductor of the retreat is exer- 
cising the intelligence both of himself and his hearers; he 
is thinking and he is compelling them to think. The value 
of his instruction depends upon the contents of his thought; 
if he has no thought, he cannot make others think; if he 
merely repeats what he has heard, if his intelligence adds 
nothing to the common intelligence, then he fails in the 
ofice of conductor. As the Lord says, “The Scribe in- 
structed in the Kingdom of God brings forth things new 
and old.” Every speaker should stir up antagonism in the 
minds of his hearers; it is by conflict that growth comes. 
He who seeks simply to please will in the end displease; 
the hearer will come away weary instead of strengthened. 

The art of meditation is of difficult practice; it is an ex- 
ercise pure and simple of the soul. When the conductor 
sits in his chair, he is in a passive state; he is ready to yield 
himself to the influences of the spirit. All he takes with 
him is a vague notion of the truth that he wants to see and 
make others see; then he keeps his will in abeyance; he 
does not strive for any effect; he does not search for any 
thought; he leaves his soul free to receive and to impart; 
he does not know, for the most part, what he is saying as 
he says it; his words come from a higher source than that 
of his own mind; it is the Great Spirit that is moving his 
spirit as the winds move the surface of the sea. ‘The art 
of meditation comes with exercise, but the genius for it 
must be inborn; no man can meditate in public who is not 
constantly meditating in private; unless the soul is per- 





RETREATS AND QUIET DAYS 161 
petually steeped in the oversoul, it cannot give forth the 
inspiration of the oversoul. 

In his address, the speaker is hortatory; he is using his 
will primarily to compel his hearers to accept and to apply 
the truths which have been imparted to them in the in- 
struction and the inspirations which have come to them in 
the meditation. Now, to exercise this office of a conduc- 
tor, one must be an all-round spiritual athlete; he must 
be able to run, to stop, to hold and to run again. If we 
are to have a true ministry to the spirit, we must make pro- 
vision for the training of men for that purpose. ‘The 
great Catholic Church does this, and that is one of the 
secrets of its continuing power, but if the Catholic Church 
is to retain the spiritual leadership or to regain it, it must 
adjust its teaching to the eternal truth; it must accept with- 
out equivocation the modern conception of the universe. 
As for the Protestant clergy, it is for them to get rid en- 
tirely of their theologies which are outworn and make 
themselves familiar with that which is nearest, namely, 
their own souls, if they have any. 

But the value of the retreat lies in the ministration of 
the conductor to the personal soul. Each soul is a per- 
sona, not a mere individual, but a persona, an actor, hay- 
ing its own part to play in the comedy of human life. It 
is this fact that finds expression in Dante’s “Divine Com- 
edy” and the human comedy of Balzac. When such a 
comedian comes into the presence of the conductor of a 
retreat, it is to confess its errors and failures, not that it 
may be free to err and fail again, but that it may be in- 
structed and cleansed and go out of that closet to play 
more nobly its part on the stage of life. Confession and 
absolution do not free a penitent from the penalty of sin. 
No power in the universe can avoid that penalty. ‘The 
best that confession and absolution can do is to break the 


162 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


habit of sin. ‘To be a physician of souls demands a knowl- 
edge and a wisdom equal at least to that of a physician of 
the body. When I think of the time I wasted in trying to 
fathom the nature of God while I was ignorant of the first 
elements of the nature of man, I hang my head in shame. 

The experience of this retreat inspired me with a desire 
to know the soul, that I might instruct in the powers of 
the soul, teaching the method whereby the soul can resist 
evil and acquire virtue. It was, therefore, of vast impor- 
tance to my spiritual life that I was compelled to study 
this great subject in order that I might apply what little 
knowledge I could acquire to the specific cases that were 
submitted to my judgment as a conductor of a retreat. 
That I did not fail entirely in this first effort follows from 
the fact that I was called again and again to perform the 
same service for the Sisters of St. Mary. I must have con- 
ducted at least five retreats for them in the course of my 
history, and the report of those retreats must have gone 
forth into the world and given me work of like character 
to be done elsewhere. 

Among the most notable of these efforts was a retreat 
which I conducted at the request of the Right Reverend 
William Croswell Doane for the clergy of Albany. This 
retreat was held in the chapel of the Cathedral of All 
Saints, Albany, during the vacation of the cathedral 
schools where the retreatants were accommodated during 
their stay. The rule of the retreat was the same as that 
which prevailed with the Sisters of St. Mary. ‘The con- 
ductor had complete charge; he gave his instruction, his 
meditation, his address, and he was at the call of the re- 
treatants for spiritual counsel and advice. 

This retreat was followed by others of like character 
for the clergy and also by “quiet days” for both clergy and 
laity. A ‘“‘quiet day” is a retreat in little; the same pro- 


iti i —— 


RETREATS AND QUIET DAYS 163 
gram is followed as that of the longer retreat; a day is 
set apart for prayer and meditation. The conductor of 
the day celebrates the communion, gives his instruction, 
meditation and address. I was frequently called to this 
duty in various parts of the country. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


A MISSIONER 


bones of Episcopalianism. It was felt by the leaders 

of that cult that they were losing ground and that if 
they were to maintain their standing as an active working 
body they must wake up. ‘The consequence was that they 
determined to cast aside their dignity for the time being 
and to adopt Methodistic methods of religious work; in 
other words, they determined to have a great revival in 
the city of New York. In this movement High Church, 
Low Church and Broad Church united. In order to save 
their dignity, they did not call this action a revival, but 
they adopted the Catholic term of “mission.” ‘The leader 
of the enterprise was the great Broad-Churchman of the 
country, Dr. William S. Rainsford. Certain churches in 
the city were selected as the places where the work was to 
be carried on. Men of reputation as preachers and spir- 
itual guides were selected to do the work. 

It was my high honour to be one of those so chosen. I 
was asked to take the mission at St. Philip’s Church in 
Mulberry Street. Now, as the reader is aware, St. Philip 
was of African descent and the churches called by this 
name were patronized by his people, so that I became 
the missioner to the coloured Episcopalians of the city 
of New York. When I left home I was accompanied by 
my friend, Mr. Paul Rochester, a son of John Rochester. 
The mission was to be opened on a certain Wednesday 


evening. On the morning of that day Mr. Rochester and 
164 


fe the year 1892 there was a stirring among the dry 


A MISSIONER 165 


myself went to the church to meet the wardens in order 
that we might make the proper arrangements for what was 
to come. When we reached the vestry room we found 
the two wardens waiting for us. ‘The senior warden was 
a Mr. White, a West Indian Negro, as fine-looking a man 
as one would care to see in a day’s journey; regular fea- 
tures, bronze complexion, tall and slender; he was a gentle- 
man every inch of him. He was a free man and always 
had been a free man. ‘The junior warden, if I recollect 
correctly, was a Mr. Prince; he was an American Negro 
and had about him the air of a man who had always been 
subjected to control. As soon as we greeted one another, 
Mr. White said to me, “Mr. Crapsey, if you and your 
friend will kindly follow us, Mr. Prince and I will lead you 
to the hotel where we have your rooms engaged.” In- 
stinctively and without a moment’s hesitation, I stepped 
forward and laid my hand on the arm of Mr. White and 
said, ‘‘Mr. White, with your permission, I will walk with 
you and Mr. Rochester will walk with Mr. Prince; we can 
talk together as we go along.’ I saw at once a flash in 
the eye of this man; he seemed surprised and gratified, and 
so we walked together through the streets of the city until 
we came to our hotel. It was this instinctive act, which 
came without any thought whatever, that was the cause of 
the great success of my work among these people. Mr. 
White said to me afterward, speaking of this incident, 
“Mr. Crapsey, no white man in America ever acted in 
such a manner toward me as you did on the morning of 
your arrival.” That is, no white man had ever been a 
gentleman in his relations with this coloured gentleman, 
and that is the reason why we have the Negro question 
and will always have the Negro question with us until the 
white man recognizes the fact that he is nothing but a man 
and every other man is his equal and that the colour of the 
skin is an indifferent matter. 


166 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


The mission opened in the evening with a congregation 
of coloured people sprinkled with whites that about half 
filled the church building. In conducting a mission, I de- 
parted from the ordinary custom of preaching a set 
sermon. I began with an instruction on some Christian 
doctrine or practice, and after speaking for about fifteen 
or twenty minutes, [ interrupted myself and called upon the 
choir to sing a hymn. At the conclusion of the hymn I 
applied the principles that. I had laid down in my instruc- 
tion to practical life, exhorting the people to practise what 
I had just preached to them. ‘This exhortation was fol- 
lowed by another hymn and this by a meditation which I 
delivered from my chair. In this way I was able to hold 
the attention of these people for about an hour, and to keep 
them all the time at a high tension of interest. ‘This is 
the method which I followed as a missioner as long as I 
exercised that office. 

The program for the day began with an early celebra- 
tion of the Holy Communion and a short meditation at 7 
o'clock. At this service, only the faithful few were 
gathered around the altar. At 9 o'clock I gave a lecture 
in theology, taking up the great fundamentals of Christian 
doctrines. During my mission at St. Philip’s I had only 
one auditor at these lectures; this was Brother Fisher, a 
very intelligent, educated man, and we had what was really 
a conference. As I went along, I would appeal to Brother 
Fisher as to his opinion in the matter under consideration. 
Brother Fisher would nod gravely his assent and I would 
go on. I never regretted the time that I devoted to the 
education of Brother Fisher; he enjoyed it; I enjoyed it 
and, by this practice, became more proficient in my office as 
a teacher of theology. During the whole of my career as 
a preacher [I have never slurred over my work because 
there were only two or three present; some of the very 
best work that I have ever done in my life has been in the 


A MISSIONER 167 
presence of a mete handful of people. In the afternoon 
there was an instruction for women at about 3 o’clock, and 
at half past four service for children, and in the evening 
the great mission service. This mission in St. Philip’s 
Church attracted wide attention, not only on the part of 
the coloured people, but also of the whites and the yel- 
lows. We had not been under way more than two or 
three days when all our meetings in the afternoons and 
evenings tested the capacity of the church. I had among 
my auditors more than once the bishop of the diocese and 
my old friend the Rector of Trinity Church. 

At the close of the mission the vestry asked me to meet 
with them and some of the principal members of the con- 
gregation, in the vestry room. ‘They begged me to sit for 
a photograph which they might have to place in their 
church. ‘They presented me with a purse of some value; 
and one of the enthusiastic gentlemen exclaimed, “Why 
suh, we didn’t know dat dare was in a little city like 
Rochester a little man what could make such a big noise.” 
I bowed graciously to this compliment and resigned my of- 
fice as missioner into the hands of the senior warden, there 
being no rector at the church at the time, and was the 
richer for a great experience. From this time out I was 
an accredited missioner of the Episcopal Church in the 
United States and Canada. I conducted in all more than 
twenty such missions. [I will instance only four. 

In the following year, 1893, I was asked to conduct a 
mission in the city of Omaha, Nebraska. The work of 
this mission was carried on, under the supervision of the 
bishop, in the cathedral church, and all the clergy of the 
city participated in the enterprise. We opened this mis- 
sion with a day’s retreat for the clergy. I gave medita- 
tions on the prophetical priestly and kingly offices of the 
clergy. The mission was opened the following evening, 
the bishop presiding, and there was a formal transfer of 


168 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the spiritual authority of the parish and the diocese to the 
missioner during the period of the mission. He was then 
the master of the situation; not even the bishop could call 
his word or action in question. The method followed was 
that already outlined as governing the mission in St. 
Philip’s, New York: the Holy Communion at 7; the in- 
struction in theology at 10; the address to women at 3; 
the instruction for children at half past four, and the great 
mission service in the evening. In addition to these regu- 
lar offices, we had in Omaha, as in all larger places, an ad- 
dress for business men at 12:30. This meeting was held 
in the heart of the business portion of the city, in a large 
vacant store, and my pulpit was a great box. It may be 
seen that the missioner had little time for idleness; an 
hour’s rest in the afternoon was all he could hope for, and 
the intensity of the day’s work found him so nervously 
awake in the night that sleep was well-nigh impossible. 
After the last service, I used to take long walks through 
the city and so I came to know something about the red- 
light district; the traffic in women in Omaha, as in other 
Western cities, was a licensed traffic. “These women were 
lodged, the better class of them, in magnificent houses 
built for that special use, and the lower class in long lines 
of one-story buildings in the segregated district. 
Returning from this digression to the account of my 
work, I found that there was some dissatisfaction on the 
part of the women as to the arrangement of the program. 
The very High Churchman of the city said to me in public 
meeting, ‘Mr. Crapsey, the ladies of my congregation, 
and of other congregations as well, desire me to ask you 
if you cannot change the order of your program so as to 
give the instruction in theology in the afternoon instead 
of the morning. Many of these ladies cannot get out in 
the morning and they do want to hear something about 
religion.’ At this I laughed very heartily. In the morn- 


A MISSIONER 169 


ing I was giving instruction in the doctrine of grace, ex- 
plaining the difference between sacramental and prevenient 
grace; in the afternoon, I was giving advice as to the prac- 
tical duties of the mother, the daughter, the wife, and the 
woman in the world. Bless their dear hearts, these la- 
dies thought that my morning instruction had to do with 
religion, and they never dreamed that it was the afternoon 
advice that was vital to the religious life. In the morn- 
ing it was the so-called science of religion that occupied our 
thoughts; in the afternoon it was the practice of religion. 
I had a great deal of fun with my High Church friend and 
his High Church ladies and I told them the story of 
Madamoiselle X, in which the employer of this disguised 
Russian Princess is describing her to her friend. Her 
friend is very anxious to know if this governess were re- 
ligious. ‘The lady of the house describes her in terms of 
morality; her neatness, her readiness to serve, her fine 
manners and the like, whereupon her friend exclaims, ‘But 
what has all this to do with religion?’ Before I had fin- 
ished I had captured the hearts of my hearers and they 
laughed as heartily as I did over their question. During 
this mission the church was crowded night after night to 
its full capacity. I shall never forget the last night; it 
was intended that we should have a procession of choir and 
clergy coming from the outside and proceeding up the cen- 
tre of the church. At about 7 o'clock I had a telephone 
message from Mr. Gardner, the rector of the parish, tell- 
ing me that they would have to abandon the procession; to 
my question, ‘“Why?” he said, ‘There isn’t an inch of 
space in the church at this moment, and I don’t know how 
we are to get you in.” When the time arrived, I went 
out of the rectory and as soon as I came on to the street 
I saw it crowded for blocks in both directions and the 
cross streets likewise. I had.to make the greatest effort 
to work my way through that dense mass into the church 


170 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


and up to the chancel. Not only were the seats taken, but 
every inch of standing-room. ‘The clergy had to stand 
along the wall of the chancel. I conducted the service as 
usual and it was really like a day of Pentecost. 

The Omaha World-Herald had the following editorial 


on the morning after the close of the mission: 


“THE LATE EPISCOPALIAN MISSION 


“During the last two weeks we have had in our midst a remark- 
able man who has done, or begun, a remarkable work. Rev. Dr. 
Crapsey, the Episcopalian clergyman from Rochester, has made a 
deep impression upon all who have come within hearing of his musical 
voice during his short mission in this city. His influence has reached 
all classes and moved all ages. His preaching has aroused the sloth- 
ful in the church and set those to thinking who are outside. He has 
taught, not only the theory, but the practice of religion, and he has 
ventured into the privacies of life, which most preachers carefully 
avoid. 

‘The power of this missioner is not the result of oratory, although 
at times he is eloquent in a simple way. Sincerity, sympathy and 
fervour are the qualities which give the extraordinary effect to his 
thoughtful and practical discourses. 

‘““The most apparent outcome of Mr. Crapsey’s work in Omaha 
is the movement which he inspired and which is already undertaken, 
to establish in the ‘burnt district’ of this city a chapel for the worship 
of God by those who feel cut off, by the lives they lead, from the up- 
town churches. Incidentally also it is proposed to have an experi- 
enced matron always accessible in this chapel ready to aid any unfor- 
tunate woman who may sincerely desire to take the first and most 
dificult step of reformation. 

“This is ‘practical’ Christianity. "The World-Herald realizes that 
Mr. Crapsey has done much else that is practical during his short so- 
journ here, but if that were all, it would be a great deal. 

“Rev. John Williams of St. Barnabas’ is the treasurer of the new 
chapel enterprise and the World-Herald hopes that all who hate vice 
or who believe in redeeming unfortunate women and giving them an- 
other chance in the world will send their contributions to him.” 


A MISSIONER 171 


In the summer of 1894 I had a call to conduct a mission 
in St. George’s Church, the parish of Paget, in the Island 
of Bermuda. I accepted this call with alacrity, not only 
because it offered me a field of usefulness, but also an op- 
portunity to see the island, and also on this occasion to 
give my wife the advantage and pleasure of the sea voyage 
and the visit to the semi-tropics. My friend, Mr. John 
Rochester, went with us. He and Mrs. Crapsey had their 
quarters at the Hamilton Hotel; I lived with the rector of 
the parish, during my stay, in his vicarage. The Paget 
parish was rural in its character, beautifully situated on 
the island. 

I opened the mission on a Sunday morning with, as us- 
ual, a comparatively small congregation. I noticed that 
there were two rows of pews midway in the church which 
seemed to be shunned by both whites and blacks. When 
we returned to the vicarage, I asked the younger Mr. 
Lough, the curate of the parish, to explain to me why it 
was that these seats in the church were taboo. He 
answered, ‘Oh, that’s the colour line; the blacks do not 
come beyond that line and no white man sits back of it.” 
I said to him, ‘Lough, I think that to-night we will abolish 
that colour line.’’ He said, ‘‘How will you do it?” I 
said, “‘Come and see.’ When we went to the church in 
the evening we found that there was no colour line there, 
nor did such a line exist during all the rest of the mission. 
It was not long before we had the whites and the blacks 
sitting in the same seats, standing shoulder to shoulder and 
singing from the same hymn books. ‘The method of con- 
ducting the mission was that which I have already out- 
lined and the attendance at all of the services tested the 
capacity of the church, and the night services crowded it 
almost beyond its capacity. The last night of the mission 
repeated the experience of Omaha. The vicarage was 
about half a mile from the church. I was accustomed to 


172 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


walk that distance every time we had services in the church 
and on each night I would find the road pretty well oc- 
cupied with those who were going to the church. On the 
last night I remained behind a little later than usual and 
made my way down the road alone, and it literally was 
alone; there was not a human being in sight, and I said to 
myself we have had five services to-day, all of them largely 
attended; doubtless the people have had enough of church- 
going and we shall have a small gathering to-night. I had 
hardly formulated this thought in my mind before I made 
the turn in the road that brought me in sight of the church- 
yard, and then I was amazed. Just outside the church- 
yard, filling the field beyond, was every sort of vehicle 
from the donkey cart to the barouche, and the churchyard 
itself was crowded with people. When I tried to reach 
the church I found it impossible and at last someone rec- 
ognized the missioner and cried, ‘Here is the little man, 
we must get him in’’; and so they picked me up and passed 
me along to the church door. When I came into the ves- 
try room, I found the bishop of the diocese there, together 
with the rector and the curate, and I said to Dr. Lough, 
the rector of the parish, “My dear Doctor, how are we 
going to get in?’ And he exclaimed, ‘‘Never fear, I will 
get you in!’ Now, Lough Senior was a very little man 
and it was quite amusing to see him force his way through 
that almost impenetrable crowd, crying in a stentorian 
voice, ‘‘Make way for the bishop and the missioner.” We 
did at last succeed in reaching the chancel. The bishop 
made a very brief address, highly commending the work 
of the mission and speaking kindly of the missioner. ‘The 
principal paper of Hamilton summed up the character and 
effect of the mission in a leading article as follows: 


“Mr. Crapsey strikes us as a man of quite extraordinary power and 
ability. His gift of memory and arrangement is unlike anything 


A MISSIONER 173 
that we have ever known before. He uses no notes, and though he 
delivers four or five addresses each day, every one of them is as 
lucid and clear as a map. He exhibits no signs of weariness, though 
we should imagine, with such earnestness, his work must be peculiarly 
exhausting. Within the church a large platform has been erected 
near the pulpit, from which the missioner delivers most of his 
addresses. At night, at 7:30, comes thé great mission service. Mr. 
Crapsey’s method is to divide his address into three portions, 
interspersed with hymns and prayers. He takes a subject for fifteen 
minutes; he gives an instruction upon that subject; then there is 
a break; then for fifteen minutes he gives an exhortation upon it; 
another break; then for ten minutes a meditation, which he delivers 
sitting down, and which is always an application of the cross to what 
has gone before. ‘The continuity of thought running through the 
three is most striking.” 


When we took the steamer for home, we were given a 
farewell by a large crowd of people who came to the dock 
and watched us until we passed out of sight. Our voyage 
home was disastrous; we encountered the greatest storm 
in the experience of the captain; at least, that is what he 
told us. We were blown two hundred miles and more out 
of our course. My wife, who was subject to seasickness in 
the calmest weather, suffered extremely in this teriffic 
storm. Our friend, Mr. Rochester, came one morning to 
visit us in our cabin, to which both Mrs. Crapsey and my- 
self were confined, and on his return, as he entered the 
saloon, the ship lurched and he was thrown clear across the 
room against the wainscoting and suffered a severe wound 
over the eye from which he never fully recovered. For 
the rest of the voyage he was in great distress and danger, 
and we began to fear that we shouldn’t get him home alive. 
When we reached New York we had an exhibition of the 
brutality of the New York customs administration. I 
went to the customs officer and told him the circumstances 
and asked permission to take Mr. Rochester immediately 


174. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 
from the ship. This request was brusquely refused and 
we had to sit for more than an hour waiting our turn. On 
leaving the steamer, we went immediately to Rochester 
and for a time Mr. Rochester’s life hung in the balance. 
He did recover sufficiently to be about again, but never 
was he the same man afterward. It is needless to say that 
Mrs. Crapsey never went to sea again. 

I will close this long chapter with a simple reference to 
a mission which I held some year or two later in St. Luke’s 
Church, Washington. ‘This mission was remarkable only 
because it exhibited in a striking way the evil attitude of 
the white toward the black and of the black toward the 
white. St. Luke’s was the church of the higher-class col- 
oured people in the city of Washington. Its rector was a 
negroid and nearly white as to his complexion. Among 
his parishioners were the Treasurer of the United States, 
judges of courts and other high officials, together with men 
and women of education and wealth. In preaching to 
these people, I told them that one of the fundamental prin- 
ciples of life was that every man should maintain the in- 
tegrity of his personality. He should assert his right to 
think and his right to act and speak within the law of 
reason. I called attention to the fact that if any man 
surrendered these liberties under threat of violence, he not 
only was a traitor to himself, but he betrayed the whole 
human race. I preached to them the doctrine of passive 
resistance. I told them how the Christian Church was 
established by the passive resistance of the martyrs. I 
told them that it was their duty, not to kill, but, if neces- 
sary, to be killed in the maintenance of their liberties. 

At the close of the mission I received an invitation from 
the leading coloured people of the city to speak for and 
to them on a Sunday afternoon in the African Methodist 
Church. ‘This building seated about three thousand peo- 
ple. At the time of this meeting it was crowded to suf- 


A MISSIONER 175 


focation. The presiding officer of the occasion was Sena- 
tor Cullum, of Illinois; the pastor of the church, the Rev- 
erend Mr. Lee, a very giant of a man, gave out the hymn, 
“My Country, Tis of Thee.” When he had given these 
words to the people, he said, ‘‘My brothers, I hope that I 
may some time give out this hymn knowing that I have a 
country.” In my address to this vast audience I repeated 
the instruction which I had given to the congregation of 
St. Luke’s Church. I said to them that if they tamely sur- 
rendered their rights, they betrayed mine. I told them 
that it was the duty of every coloured citizen of the United 
States to cast his vote at every election. If in doing so 
he were to lose his life, his life would be well lost. I 
urged upon them the fact that if one million of Negroes 
were so to sacrifice themselves, the question of the politi- 
cal equality of the race would be settled for ever; and if 
they said that this was asking too much of them, I an- 
swered that we white people had laid down more than a 
million lives to secure their freedom. 

I was mildly rebuked by my dear friend, Mr. Sanford, 
the editor then of Harper's Weekly, for these utterances. 
He held up the policy of Booker Washington as that 
which was to be followed, rather than my teaching. The 
Negroes were to forgo their political rights and content 
themselves with industrial rights, but I maintained that 
political rights are necessary to the protection of industrial 
rights. A man without a vote is helpless in a voting 
community. 

During all the time of my stay in Washington, not a 
single white clergyman of the Episcopal Church gave me 
the slightest attention. J went with the rector to call upon 
the bishop and he was just leaving his palace as we came 
to the door, and he said, ‘‘How do you do?” and ‘‘Good- 
bye,” and that was all. After my return home I had a let- 
ter from him rebuking me for having preached as I had in 


176 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


his diocese. ‘This, it seems to me, is sufficient condemna- 
tion of the present attitude of the Church, not only toward 
the Negro, but toward the working class in general. The 
Negroes are a great working class of the South. They 
need the franchise to protect their interests. When we 
deny the franchise to them, we violate the fundamental 
principle underlying our political existence, and the whole 
nation is to-day losing its political liberty because, among 
other reasons, it is denying this political liberty to the 
working class of the South. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


DANGEROUS READING 


URING all the period of my ministerial life, I 
1) kept to my habit of general reading; in fact, it 

was my only recreation. I not only continued 
my historical studies, but I was intensely interested in the 
subjects which were at that time engaging the attention of 
the world. No period of history was more alive than 
that in which I passed my adult life. The rapidity of in- 
tellectual change made one dizzy. 

I entered the ministry under the impulse of the roman- 
ticist movement of the early nineteenth century. My mas- 
ters were the poets, the historians and the philosophers of 
that age; the Bible was my handbook which I read as the 
Word of God. I studied the great Anglican divines; I 
was inspired by the sermons of Newman and the poetry of 
Keble. I was living in a world of’ my own creating, a 
moral and spiritual world, but I was woefully ignorant of 
that external world of force and form which science was 
then creating for the mind of man to live in. 

I was roused to the consideration of the scientific world 
by the Darwinian discussion which was storming the very 
citadel of my theology and threatening to sweep it from 
its foundations. J heard Huxley’s lectures on Genesis and 
Tyndall's lectures on sound. ‘Take him for all and all, I 
think Tyndall the perfection of the platform speaker; in 
figure, voice and form no man whom I have ever heard has 
equalled him. Huxley was a splendid fighter, but the in- 


tensity of his passion marred his delivery. ‘Tyndall was 
177 


178 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


as impassionate as science itself. Not only did | have the 
privilege of listening to these warriors of the New Faith; 
I also had access to their thought by means of the printed 
page. I read Tyndall on “Light and Heat’; Huxley’s 
‘Essays’; Darwin’s ‘‘Descent of Man’’; Argyle’s “Reign 
of Law’—a work of the highest merit—I read Lyell’s 
“Geology,” and as many others as came to my hand which 
could tell me anything about the wonderful world which I 
had just discovered. I never became a scientist, but I did 
become a lover of science. My lack in mathematics pre- 
vented my entering into the deeper mysteries of natural 
law, but I could master the reasoning of the great teachers 
and make their conclusions my own. Without knowing it, 
I had assimilated the principles of evolution and the con- 
servation of energy, and, strange to say, these new doc- 
trines did not jostle the old. I still believed, or thought 
I believed, in the doctrines of the fall of man, redemp- 
tion by grace, in the miraculous birth, resurrection and 
ascension of Jesus, and in this I was not peculiar; three- 
fourths of the Christian world was then and is now in the 
same perilous condition: holding with equal tenacity con- 
tradictory propositions. 

It was my misfortune to stumble into another pit of 
knowledge from which it was not so easy to get out. 
When the Anti-Nicean Library was published by the Uni- 
versity of Oxford, I began a new reading of the Fathers 
of the Church under the guidance of these English schol- 
ars. As I was reading Clement, Polycarp, the ‘Epistle to 
Diognetus,” the ‘Pastor of Hermes,’ I remarked to my 
astonishment the utter absence of any reference to the 
story of the miraculous birth of Jesus. In two of these 
works—the ‘Epistle to Diognetus,”’ which is a letter from 
the writer to a friend explaining the Christian belief, and 
the “Pastor of Hermes,” which is a story of early Chris- 
tian life, full of the miraculous—this omission of any 


DANGEROUS READING 79 


reference to the birth stories was most significant; had 
the story been a part of the then Christian tradition, it 
must have been referred to by these writers. Startled by 
this strange omission, I reread the Apostolic writings and, 
to my further astonishment, found the same significant 
silence. Paul not only does not affirm, he expressly denies 
this story; he affirms that Jesus was of the seed of David, 
according to the flesh. To be Messiah, Jesus must be 
the son of David. His descent from David was traced 
through the male line to Joseph; if Joseph were not his 
father, then Jesus had no claim to the Messiahship; for 
nowhere is it asserted that Mary, his mother, was of the 
tribe of Judah. 

When I turned from the Epistles to the Gospels, I 
found a condition now familiar to every intelligent reader, 
but then unknown except to a few scholars; being hidden 
by a cloud of myth and legend. I discovered that Mark’s 
Gospel, which is the earliest form of the Christian tradi- 
tion, knows nothing of the birth stories. This Gospel ex- 
pressly affirms that Jesus was the son of Joseph, and that 
Nazareth was his birthplace. John’s Gospel, which is the 
last of the series, agrees with Mark; if the writer of this 
Gospel had ever heard of the birth stories, he rejected 
them. ‘The stories as found in Matthew and Luke are 
clearly a later addition to these Gospels. In both these 
narratives the life of Jesus begins with the baptism; in the 
body of both of these histories, it is asserted over and over 
again that Jesus was the son of Joseph and was a native of 
Nazareth in Galilee. Besides all this, these stories differ 
so essentially from one another that if one is true the other 
cannot be. It is plain, therefore, that we are dealing, 
when we read these stories, not with sober history but with 
myth and legend; more with legend than with myth. 

This is now the merest commonplace of New Testament 
criticism. But it was not commonplace when I made the 


180 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


discovery; for it was a discovery; it did not come to me at 
second hand; it was the result of my own analysis of the 
original documents. I became in this way unintentionally 
a Higher Critic, and as will be shown further on I was the 
first man in this country to publicly apply the principles of 
the Higher Criticism to the New Testament stories. This 
event stimulated my curiosity and I became a close student 
of the Higher Criticism. I read Robertson Smith’s arti- 
cles in the “Encyclopedia Britannica’’; I read Keim’s “Jesu 
Von Nazara’”’ and Strauss’ “Leben Jesu,’’ and Renan’s 
“Vie de Jésus.’ After this reading, Jesus became to me 
the Son of God in a far higher sense than He had ever 
been before; He was the Son of God, not by divine mir- 
acle, but by divine law; He was the Son of the Father be- 
cause He was the life of the Father manifested in the 
world. 

It must not be supposed that as soon as I made this dis- 
covery I rushed into the pulpit and proclaimed it to my 
people; far from it; it was years before I dared to acknowl- 
edge to myself that what my intelligence told me was so, 
was really so. It was not until my secret became an al- 
most open secret that I spoke of it in public, and then it 
was an accident. My conscience did from time to time 
trouble me, but I stilled its voice by the din of my prac- 
tical work. I did, however, after a period begin to teach 
the natural birth to my confirmation classes and spoke in 
the pulpit of the birth stories as legends created by the 
natural desire of the Christians to magnify their Lord. 
But what I did in this way of explanation made no stir; 
what my people wanted from me and what they got was 
the teaching and life of Jesus after he was born; what hap- 
pened to Him before that did not concern them. 

It is a commonplace of religious history that the priests 
have one doctrine for themselves and another for the peo- 
ple. Just before I suffered the full penalty of my dan- 


DANGEROUS READING ISI 


gerous reading, I had an experience of this. I was dining 
with a company of clergymen, who were invited to meet 
two ministers recently arrived from the South to take up 
their residence in Rochester. This company included a 
high dignitary of the Catholic Church, and the leading 
clergymen of the various denominations. Now, to my 
astonishment, every one of these men, together with the 
host of the evening, who was a layman of high standing in 
one of the Churches, with the exception of the two Baptist 
ministers from the South, had rejected the birth stories, 
and not only believed but knew scientifically that Jesus was 
the son of Joseph. | 

When I came out from that company I was startled; I 
said to myself, ‘“Are we, as the priests of Egypt, believing 
one thing ourselves and teaching its opposite to the people 
and taking pay from the people in exchange for this fraud- 
ulent instruction?” And I was afraid, 


CHAPTER XXX 


ILLUSION 


that brought me to the gates of the grave, hovering 
for many days between life and death. I was the ob- 
ject of many prayers. 

My people, in order that my health might be established 
on a sure foundation, made up a purse to pay the expenses 
of a sea voyage and to give me the recreation of a visit to 
Europe; as both time and purse were limited, I was obliged 
to confine my visit to England, and it was my purpose to 
make a tour of the cathedrals. When I left home, I was 
still in a state of nervous prostration, hardly equal to the 
discomforts of life on shipboard. ‘The steamer on which 
I sailed belonged to an American line and lacked the space 
and speed and comfort of the Cunard or the White Star 
ships; my room was next to the kitchen; it was noisy, foul 
and overrun with roaches. Because of this I spent as 
much of my time as possible on deck. For the first two 
days, I was in the throes of seasickness and my life was a 
misery, and the heaving within was like unto the heaving 
of the sea. By and by this illness passed, but I was still 
very miserable and looked forward with distress to the 
many days that must pass before I could be at home again 
in the care of my wife. In fact, I was so far down in the 
depths that I should have been glad to go down deeper 
with the ship to the bottom of the sea. We had been out 
three days and I had not spoken a word to a human. I 


was alone in my room and so far had not gone to the table. 
182 


T the year 1889 I was the victim of a severe illness 


ILLUSION 183 


It was no marvel that I cursed the day when I left my com- 
fortable home to submit myself to the restless waves and 
the kind attention of the cockroaches. 

But succour was at hand. On the fourth morning of 
the voyage out, as I was leaning against the rail looking at 
the heaving of the waves, wondering if they could never 
be still for a moment, my attention was arrested by the ap- 
proach of aman. As I looked at him I almost hated him. 
He was all that I was not. I was a weak, sickly speci- 
men of humanity, scarcely five feet six, weighing hardly 
120; this stranger bearing down upon me was a veritable 
son of Anak; he was at least six feet two in his stockings, 
he weighed over two hundred pounds; his face was covered 
with a full reddish beard; his eyes were grey speckled with 
red; in form and feature he was a berserker of a man. 
When he spoke to me, as he did, his rich full voice was all 
the more attractive because of a slight Scottish burr. I do 
not remember how he opened the conversation; doubtless it 
was some casual remark about the weather; but whatever 
it was, it instantly carried me out of myself into the puri- 
fying atmosphere of human companionship. ‘The conver- 
sation thus casually entered upon continued with intermis- 
sions for twenty-eight years. It was a sad day in my life 
when, in the fall of 1916, word came to me that Donald 
Kennedy was dead. This chance meeting on shipboard 
ripened into a friendship which greatly enriched my life. 

Donald Kennedy was an Edinburgh merchant, the head 
of the large business of Charles Jenner, the leading draper 
establishment, or, as we should call it, dry-goods store, of 
Scotland; he did not have the mien of an American busi- 
ness man; one could not think of him as standing behind 
a counter waiting upon the whims of women, but rather as 
a Highland Chief with naked knees, leading his warriors 
against his Lowland foes. Donald Kennedy was return- 
ing with his wife from a visit of pleasure to Canada and 


184. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the States. I afterward learned that it was Mrs. Ken- 
nedy who, seeing me so forlorn, alone and miserable, said 
to her husband, “Do go and speak to that young man; he 
seems so unhappy.” Bless her dear heart! Before leav- 
ing the ship, I had an invitation to visit the Kennedys at 
their home, Kirton Lodge, Murrayfield—which I did 
many times. Of these visits, I shall have much to say as 
I come to them in the course of this history. I can never 
to this day understand my friendship with Kennedy, ex- 
cept that it was the attraction of opposites; Donald was 
big, I was little; Donald was rich, I was poor; Donald was 
practical, I a dreamer—but what then? It was a great 
friendship. 

In ten days our voyage came to an end and we landed 
early in the afternoon at Greenock, where we entrained 
for Glasgow, which was as far as our ticket carried us. 
The Kennedys travelled first class, I third, and promising 
to visit them before my return to the States, I bade them 
good-bye. From Glasgow, I went on immediately to 
Edinburgh, reaching there in the early evening. I gave 
the address of my hotel on Princess Street to the cabby, 
who touched his hat, drove briskly out of the station, and 
in half a minute we were at my hotel, and bang! went a 
shilling and sixpence. How much of our wealth we might 
save if we could only look for a single moment into our 
future; but I laughed and said to cabby, ‘“Easy money,”’ 
and gave him his tip. I went immediately to my room, 
washed away the stains of travel, put on a clean collar and 
went down to dinner, and a good dinner it was; I do not 
recall the dishes, but I remember that they were washed 
down with good old Scotch ale. After dinner I went out 
from the hotel on to the Street and had the thrill of my 
life; with my back to the hotel, I was face to face with my 
beloved Middle Ages. Princess Street, Edinburgh, runs 
along the edge of the deep and wide ravine that separates 


ILLUSION 185 


the old town from the new. What I saw was the old town 
with its ancient buildings, shouldering each other up the 
hill-side; [ saw the castle with its flag flying, and was car- 
ried back to the days of Wallace and Bruce; I heard the 
pibroch, its weird music lamenting the dying day; I heard 
the cannon salute the setting sun; I saw the flag flutter 
down its stafl—my heart was ali aglow with joy; here was 
I home at last, in the land of my dreams. All through the 
long twilight, I walked up and down Princess Street, under 
the spell of the past. I repeated the lines, “Scots, wha 
hae wi’ Wallace bled.” I hid with Bruce in his cave and 
learned with him perseverance from the spider; I fought 
with him at Bannockburn and gave to Scotland its freedom. 
As the darkness closed in, I carried away with me to my 
bed the world of my imagination and I dreamed of it all 
the night long. 

I was at this time, though not conscious of it, in the last 
stage of medievalism; my early reading and thinking were 
still in control; I worshipped the Church as the embodi- 
ment of the medieval age; its priesthoods and its theolo- 
gies, its cathedrals and its worship were to me the out- 
ward manifestations in this world of the Kingdom of God. 

The next morning I went over to the Castle and saw it 
in the light of day; the glamour of night was dissipated; 
the soldiers were only men smoking their pipes; children 
were playing in the streets, and I was out once more in 
the modern world. I spent the day walking out to 
Arthur’s Seat, visiting Holyrood and suchlike places. 
The next morning I went on to Durham. 


CHAPTER XXXI 
DISILLUSION 


EAVING Edinburgh after breakfast, I reached Dur- 
ham in time for lunch, which I had at the Red 
Lion Inn. Throughout my visit in England I 

affected the old-fashioned inn rather than the modern hotel. 
My lunch at the Red Lion Inn was ‘“Dickensish.”” It con- 
sisted of bread and cheese and bitter. Thus refreshed, I 
made my way up the hill from which the cathedral looks 
down on the city. When I came near and my vision com- 
prehended this ancient building as a whole, I was conscious 
of a chill of disappointment. JI was not so much im- 
pressed by the beauty and the grandeur of the structure 
as by its bigness. I wondered what gargantuan god it 
was that sprawled his immensity in the wide spaces enclosed 
by this wilderness of stone. When I entered this house, 
my feeling of disappointment was tinged with anger; I was 
not permitted to wander at my will and study; I was met 
at the door by a verger who seized upon me, compelling 
me to see the cathedral, not with my own eyes, but with 
his. He insisted on showing me this chapel and that, 
built, not to the glory of any god, but to the glory of 
this bishop and that; he made me look at the vestments of 
the priests embroidered and bejewelled, for which I cared 
nothing. He took me into the chapel of the nine altars 
and showed me the relics of St. Cuthbert; I followed him 
into the library and looked at illuminated missals of the 
tenth century. 


All this sightseeing was to the accompaniment of the 
186 


DISILLUSION 187 


ceaseless drivel of the guide; wearied and bored to distrac- 
tion, I gave him a ten-shilling piece and escaped. I wan- 
dered about and saw the bishop’s palace, the dean’s house, 
the snug homes of the canons, major and minor, and I saw 
the castle of the Lord. In a moment, as by a flash from 
the sky, I suffered an instant and complete disillusion; my 
medievalism shrivelled up and dropped from me as a burn- 
ing garment. I asked myself, ‘What has all this pride 
and pomp to do with the religion of Jesus of Nazareth?” 

By and by the bells chimed for evensong, and I went in 
and saw choir and clergy come out of the chantry and 
make procession up the church. I knelt down to worship 
and stood up to hear. ‘The performance from the artistic 
point of view was faultless; the singing of the canticles and 
the intonation of the prayers charmed the spirit into a 
quiet ecstasy; it was the perfection of sensuous devotion. 
When the Scriptures were duly read and the prayers were 
offered, the clergy and the choir returned to their robing- 
room, divested themselves of their sacred garments and 
went home to tea; fully convinced that they had been well 
employed in the service of God. I do not think it is pos- 
sible for anyone to have suffered so complete, and to me so 
disastrous, a change of view as came over me that after- 
noon. I looked at all these buildings and listened to this 
elaborate worship, not from the ecclesiastical, but from 
the economic angle of vision; it was a complete conver- 
sion. Being a poor man myself and having all my life 
carried the burdens of the poor, I could not help asking 
myself, “Who pays for all this?’ If God pays, where 
does God get the money? These buildings—cathedrals, 
castle, palace, clergy houses—must have cost a vast sum 
of labour in the past. Were the labourers of the past 
duly paid for their labour? The maintenance of these 
buildings must cost a vast sum of labour in the present; 
these bishops and clergy, these singers and vergers do not 


188 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


serve God for naught; the bishops and the higher clergy 
are clothed in purple and fine linen and fare sumptuously 
every day; when at home, butlers and maids stand behind 
their chairs to serve them at table; there are cooks in 
their kitchens and grooms in their stables. When men 
speak to the bishop, they call him “My Lord.” So the 
reader may see that the English bishop is a costly prop- 
osition, and of these bishops the Bishop of Durham was 
among the most expensive. The See of Durham was long 
the richest bishopric in England; the total revenue of the 
dean and chapter during the seven years ending in 1834 
was £36,937 ($184,685) a year. At the death of the 
reigning bishop in 1836, the income of his successors was 
fixed at £8,000 ($40,000) a year, a very tidy income even 
then. All this indicates the vast expense of these establish- 
ments to the people of England. ‘‘Who pays for it?” 
The next day I went on to York and encountered the 
same economic problem on a vaster scale. York Minster 
gives the impression of vastness beyond that of any of the 
English cathedrals; it is one of the greatest buildings in 
the world; it is said that Cromwell stabled his horses in 
the nave of this House of God. ‘To Cromwell’s way of 
thinking, this was no sacred enclosure; it was only empty 
space convenient to his cavalry. While visiting this min- 
ster, I was accidentally locked in the chapter house during 
the lunch hour. This was a circular building and part of 
the cathedral. ‘The ribs running from the roof of the 
room ended in grotesque human faces, eyes astare, nose 
twisted, chin and nose meeting, thumb in mouth drawing 
the face awry. It seemed as though the monkish carvers 
of these grotesques were making a mock of their own folly. 
When I considered that at the time these cathedrals 
were in building, the workers of England were living in 
wattle huts without chimneys, without windows, eating a 
morsel of bread to keep them alive, brutish in their igno- 


DISILLUSION 189 


rance, foul in their clothing, my anger was kindled against 
these priests that built so magnificently for themselves and 
for their gods, leaving the people to perish in their poverty. 
As I went from cathedral to cathedral, seeing the same 
sight everywhere, gods and bishops living in splendour, 
lording it over a degraded people, I lost what little respect 
I had for bishops and no longer admired cathedrals. 
When I came at last to London, then my indignation 
passed the boiling-point. I visited the great cathedral of 
St. Paul’s and the Chapel, so called, of Westminster, and 
was present at their magnificent offices of worship; and 
then went out into the regions of Shoreditch and Mile End 
Road and saw thousands upon thousands of idle men lean- 
ing against the wall, hungry and hopeless; saw bedraggled 
women nursing children at empty breasts, the children 
themselves playing in the streets, having the faces of 
angels, which I knew would soon be transformed into the 
faces of these degraded men and women who had brought 
them into the world. At night I went out and saw other 
thousands sleeping in the parks and under the arches of 
the bridges, and I despaired of Christianity. 

I visited the then most celebrated preacher in England, 
Canon Liddon. In the course of my conversation with 
him, he had occasion to mention the difficulty that had 
arisen in regard to one of the palaces of the Bishop of 
London. I remarked, ‘Does the Bishop of London need 
a palace?’ With some surprise he answered, ‘Without 
a palace, the Bishop of London would lose his essential 
dignity.”” When I heard that, I had heard all that was 
necessary to account for the decadence of the Church of 
England. On the following Sunday I listened to an 
eloquent sermon delivered by the great Canon to a con- 
gregation which crowded St. Paul’s Cathedral, and, of all 
things in the world, he preached of the Virgin Mary! 
That was enough for me. I went to no more cathedrals. 


190 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

I studied as well as I could some of the phases of the 
London poor; I went back to Edinburgh, paid a short 
visit to my friend, Donald Kennedy, and then returned to 
my country, my parish and my home, a wiser and a sadder 


man. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


A REVULSION OF FEELING 
1) URING the early and middle periods of my ministry 


there was no day in the Christian year to which 

I looked forward more eagerly than to Good 
Friday. This day was a greater day to me than Christmas 
or Easter. The reason for this preference was that Good 
Friday offered me the opportunity for the exercise of my 
peculiar gift of meditation. 

There is in human history no series of events more dra- 
matic than the arrest, the trial, the conviction and the 
death of Jesus. The writers who have recorded these 
transactions for us were unconscious dramatists; simple 
men using simple language, they were story-tellers of the 
highest merit. The death of Jesus was more to them than 
the death of a man; it was the death of the Messiah; it 
was not to them a human, it was a cosmic event; the day 
that it happened was to these Galilean peasants a day of 
doom. When Jesus perished, the hopes and expectation 
of the Hebrews perished with Him. So charged are these 
narratives with terror and grief that they terrify us and 
break our hearts even to this day. So vivid is their story 
that we, their readers, are with them as the tragedy un- 
folds itself before their eyes. We sit with them at the 
Last Supper; we go forth with them into the dark and 
chill of the night; we walk with them out of the gates of 
the city and up the hill to the Garden of Gethsemane. 
There we stand and watch while the Master withdraws 


to enter into His agony; we are struck with terror as the 
191 


192 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


soldiers come and lay hold of the Master and take Him 
away. With Peter we follow afar off, hide ourselves with 
the servants in the Hall of Caiaphas and deny the Master. 
With Peter we hear the cock crow and go out and weep. 
In the grey of the morning we press forward with the 
crowd that surges after Jesus as He is taken from the Hall 
of Caiaphas to the Roman Pretorium. We see Pilate 
washing his hands; we see Jesus scourged and crowned 
with thorns; we go after Jesus as He passes out of the 
gate of the city and up the Mount of Calvary. We see 
Jesus nailed to the Cross, and, sitting down, we watch Him 
there. At the ninth hour we shudder at the cry of despair 
that rends the air; the cry of Eli Eli Lama Sabacthani: 
‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” And 
then with Peter we turn and flee away into Galilee. Since 
the world began, millions and millions of men have 
perished by violence in agony of soul and none of them is 
remembered as this man, because none of them has had 
such story-tellers to tell his story as this man had. 

In my early ministry I looked forward to the coming 
of this day as one might look forward to the coming of 
Booth in ‘‘Hamlet.”’ On that day we set our house in 
order as if there were someone dead in the house. The 
closed shutters shut out the light of the day. The chil- 
dren were confined to the nursery; no food was cooked 
that day. The lights on the altar were taken away and 
the Cross on the altar was veiled in black. We had what 
is called the dry communion, no bread was broken, no wine 
was blessed. When Death himself was present we needed 
no symbol of death. 

When the sixth hour came, according to the ancient 
reckoning, the people came and filled the church. The 
acolytes came in bearing the crape-veiled cross. There 
was no singing, only the organ played softly in the minor 
key. Then I, the minister, came in and, sitting in a chair 


A REVULSION OF FEELING 193 


on the topmost step of the chancel, gave seven meditations 
on the seven sayings from the Cross. After each medita- 
tion there was silence for a space, with the organ sobbing 
softly as mourners at a funeral. So it went on year after 
year. We looked forward to it with eagerness. On every 
Good Friday we indulged ourselves in the luxury of grief. 

As soon as the sun set on Good Friday, we were as 
people coming home from a funeral: ‘The shutters were 
opened to the light of day; the children were released from 
the nursery; the table was laid for dinner and life went 
on as usual. The Saturday after Good Friday was a busy 
day preparing for Easter. Easter came with the church 
thronged; the women in their new frocks and spring bon- 
nets, the men in garments fresh from the tailor. After 
His brief life on earth and His three hours of mortal 
agony, the Lord had risen indeed and had entered into 
His eternal glory. 

As I came to the middle period of life, this system of 
worship began to pall upon me. Good Friday came but 
the emotions of Good Friday did not come with it. I 
did not know why, but my heart was cold to the suffer- 
ings and the death of Jesus. I had ceased to believe, with- 
out knowing it, that these sufferings and death had any 
relation to my daily life. I could no longer think that 
Jesus by His agony in the Garden and His death on the 
Cross had appeased for me the wrath of God. That 
wrathful God no longer had a place in my thoughts. The 
story of the Garden of Eden and the Fall of Man had 
resolved itself into an ancient myth. ‘The sufferings and 
the death of Jesus were no longer isolated from the suffer- 
ings and the death of mankind. He was but one among 
the millions who have suffered pain and death since the 
world began. While I was indulging myself in the luxury 
of grief over One who had died more than two thousand 
years ago, I was callous to the sufferings and the dyings 


IQ4. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


which were going on all around me. While Jesus suffered 
agony for three hours upon the Cross, I have known men 
and women who have suffered for twice as many years. 

As I write these lines I am thinking of a woman who 
for seven years has never known an hour without pain: 
pain that has twisted her limbs out of shape. Day and 
night, waking and sleeping, pain is always with her. She 
prays to die and she cannot die. What has this woman 
done that she should suffer to this extremity? Nothing 
but to be a good woman, a faithful wife and a loving 
mother. What are the six hours of Jesus on the Cross 
to the seven years of agony of this woman? In the presence 
of this awful fact I refuse any longer to concern myself 
with what happened on Calvary two thousand years ago. 
I can only bemoan my wasted years that leave me helpless 
in the presence of this horror. I can only go and sit for 
a few minutes at the bedside of this woman, and by 
smoothing her hair and holding her hand and reading to 
her in a low voice from the poems of Oscar Wilde, beguile 
her for a few moments from the consciousness of her pain. 

There never was a sadder man than I when the clerical 
scales fell from my eyes and I saw the world just as it is, 
a world of sin, sickness, sorrow and death: a world of 
war, pestilence and famine, just as it was before Jesus died; 
just as it will be until men cease to worship Jesus as a 
God and begin to care for one another as He cared for 
the sinful, the sick and the sorrowing while He was yet 
alive. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 
A STARTLING DISCOVERY 


N the year 1898, the year of the Spanish-American War 
—a war in which decadent Spain brought about the 
decadence of the Republic of the United States, chang- 

ing the character of the democratic Republic of Washing- 
ton and Lincoln to the imperial Republic of McKinley and 
Roosevelt; in the summer of this fatal year, while the war 
was still in progress, I was invited to occupy the chair of 
dogmatic theology in a summer school which was organ- 
ized by the Canadian clergy and was in session during 
the months of July and August. 

The location of this temporary seat of learning was 
the lake region of Southern Ontario, in the vicinity of 
Peterborough; than which there can be no more charming 
spot in the world for the wearied parson to renew his 
strength and refresh his soul. In all there were about fifty 
clergymen as scholars in the school. Herbert Symonds, 
dean of the Cathedral of Montreal, was there with a con- 
tingent of the clergy from the Province of Quebec. Pro- 
fessor Clark, of the Theological Seminary of ‘Toronto, 
came with a following from the Province of Ontario and 
there were a few men from the States, including Charles H. 
Brent, the present distinguished and beloved Bishop of 
Western New York, himself a Canadian. The order of 
the day was to rise at six in the morning, attend the cele- 
bration of the eucharist, then to breakfast, and after break- 
fast the morning walk; the school was in session from 


nine to one. ‘There were classes in history, dogmatics, 
195 


196 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


exegesis of the Old and New Testaments, liturgiology, 
pastoral care and the like. As stated above, I occupied 
the chair of dogmatics. I had as my pupils not raw youth 
from the schools, but mature men, holding high positions 
in the Church. It was to such men as Dean Symonds and 
Professor Clark that I was daring to unravel the ravelled 
skein of Christian dogma. ‘This dogma was the product 
of centuries of controversy. The doctrine of the Trinity, 
before it was established, had torn to fragments the seam- 
less robe of Christian charity, so that the saying of the 
pagans, ‘‘See how these Christians love one another,” was 
changed to the sneer, ‘‘See how these Christians hate one 
another.” ‘[he doctrine of grace, formulated by the 
genius of Augustine of Hippo, remained an undigestible 
mass in the system of the Church until it produced the 
burning fevers of the reformation period, caused the dis- 
ruption of Protestantism and came to its hard, cold for- 
malism in the doctrine of Calvin. Already the modern 
historical critic was undermining the foundations of the 
whole dogmatic system, and science was displacing dogma 
as the explanation of the universe. And who was I that 
I should presume to reconcile the contradictions of Christian 
dogma and arrest the process of its decay? 

In order to make reasonable the unreasonable, I used 
the Butlerian method of analogy. In illustration of the 
dogma of the Trinity I cited the age-long analogy of the 
father, the mother and the child. The father is one; 
but as long as he is in this isolated unity he is barren. 
It is not until his unity is merged with the unity of the 
woman and these two become one that the third member 
of the Trinity emerges from the union of the two; this is 
the eternal triad. I instanced also the triangle as the 
union of three in one. When I came to the explanation 
of the doctrine of grace I used the analogy, the air and 
the lung. Theologians speak of the grace of God, which 


A STARTLING DISCOVERY 197 


is the power of God, as prevenient grace and sacramental 
grace. Grace that goes before and grace that follows 
after. Thus, before a man can breathe the air, the air 
must be there to breathe: ‘The air is always there waiting 
on life; but before a man can appropriate the air, he must 
have a breathing-apparatus, and his lungs are that device; 
they take in the air and transform it into blood. The air 
goes before and follows after the act of breathing. This 
is an analogy of the theological doctrine of grace, preven- 
lent and sacramental. 

When it came to the doctrine of the Incarnation, I used 
the analogy of the thought and brain. The thought is 
purely spiritual; it has neither form nor colour; neither 
length, breadth nor thickness; it is soundless. It is not 
until this spiritual essence incarnates itself in the fleshly 
matter of the brain that it can make itself known and do 
its work in the universe of sight and sound. 

During all these mornings, as I was speaking from my 
chair, I noticed that Professor Clark was restless in his 
seat; he twisted and turned. I was fascinated by fear as 
I watched him. When I came to my explanation of the 
dogma of the Incarnation he could stand it no longer; he 
rose to his feet, his face red with anger, and said, ‘‘Gentle- 
men, I can no longer sit still and listen to such teaching 
as we have been obliged to hear from the chair of dog- 
matics.” 

Of course, I was taken aback as any teacher would be 
if a scholar were to rise up and challenge his teaching. 
In an ordinary school the teacher could send this audacious 
scholar to the dark room and ferule him after school; but 
I could not do this to a grave professor of theology who 
was my senior by ten years. I was flabbergasted. I could 
see all the members of the class grinning at me. So I 
meekly said, “I’m sorry, Professor. What’s wrong with 
my teaching?” 


198 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


‘“What’s wrong? what’s wrong?” he cried, anger ring- 
ing in his voice and flashing from his eyes; ‘‘what’s wrong? 
It’s all wrong!” 

‘Professor, pardon my ignorance, but just what is 
wrong?” 

“Tt’s all wrong, all wrong; you are not basing your 
dogma on the infallible authority of the Church, but on 
your own fallible reason. Iwas told that you were a High- 
Churchman, a ritualist, but you are not a High-Churchman, 
you are not a ritualist; you are a rationalist. You are 
rationalizing theology.” 

At this I could hear all my class snicker and I was red 
with shame; and I said, my voice charged with fear and 
anger, ‘I beg pardon, Professor; but if the human brain 
must appropriate Christian dogma, must not the human 
mind explain it?” 

“Sir,” he cried, ‘“‘such teaching as yours has no place in 
the Church! You are worse than a Ritschlian.”’ 

Now all the class roared with laughter; but I could 
not laugh. I was alarmed: I had never heard of a 
Ritschlian before; I did not know the beast. I humbled 
myself before my ignorance and I said, “I beg pardon, 
Professor, but what is a Ritschlian? I never heard of it 
before’; and all the class rocked in its seats and roared 
with laughter. 

alte etre ’’ cried the raging professor. “Do you 
mean to tell me that you sit in that chair of dogmatic 
theology and do not know what a Ritschlian is, and call 
him ‘it’ ?” 

“I’m awfully sorry, Professor; I know I have no right 
to sit in this seat and to dare to instruct such wisdom as 
yours. Won't you pardon me and pity my ignorance and 
tell me what a Ritschlian is?’ And all the class stamped 
its feet and shouted with glee, and the professor went away 
in a rage. I offered then and there to resign my chair of 





A STARTLING DISCOVERY 199 


dogmatic theology but the class would not have it so, and 
they pushed me back in my seat, saying of all the profes- 
sors they had ever had I was the most amusing, and an 
amusing professor was too rare a bird to be killed. I will 
not say that this description is an exact reproduction of 
this scene, but it is as it reproduces itself in my memory. 

And now, dear reader, what is a Ritschlian? It is not, 
as I feared, some antediluvian dragon with wings and 
claws; it was only a new species of Christian heretic. It 
seems that on the 21st of March, 1822, in the town of 
Breslau there was born to one Papa Ritschl and to one 
Mama Ritschl a man-child and they called his name 
Albrecht. And Albrecht grew up as German men-children 
will until he came to man’s estate. In the process of grow- 
ing up, this German man-child was sent to the Real-school, 
the Gymnasium and the University. In the University this 
Albrecht specialized in theology, and, running true to type, 
he became a man of vast theological learning; he mastered 
all the theologies of all the theologians, and, like the true 
German that he was, he could find none to his mind and 
must needs make a theology of his own and upon that the- 
ology found a school. And it seems that I, without even 
so much as having heard his name, was a member of his 
school; I was a Ritschlian. These were hard lines: To 
this day I have not so much as seen one of his books, nor 
read a line therein. All that I-know of Ritschl I have got- 
ten from an article in the “Encyclopedia Britannica,” and 
this is what I read: ‘His [ Ritschl’s] limitation of The- 
ological knowledge to the bounds of human need might, if 
logically pressed run perilously near to phenomenalism, and 
his Epistomology [we only know things in their activities | 
does not cover this weakness. In seeking ultimate reality 
in the circle of active consciousness, he rules out all meta- 
physic [Thank God for Ritschl!], indeed much that is a 
part of normal Christian faith, i.e., the Eternity of the 


200 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


Son is passed over as beyond the range of Method.” 
(“Encyclopedia Britannica,’ Vol. XXII, tenth edition, 
page 248). 

After reading this account of Ritschlianism I made the 
startling discovery that I was a Ritschlian. Like this 
learned German I had come to think that all the theology of 
worth to man was theology brought down to human need. 
Whether Jesus were the Eternal Son of God or not was 
of no consequence; it was the human Jesus, with His human 
insight into human life, that mattered. Thus it came to 
pass that I, who in my callow youth had despised rational- 
ism, had all along been myself a rationalist. And of this 
the ritualistic school in the Church was always suspicious; 
it never trusted me. But to this day I cannot see why 
a rationalist may not also be a ritualist. Is not the master 
mind of the universe both rational and ritualistic? Does 
it not order the movement of the earth in its annual jour- 
ney round the sun according to the strictest law of reason? 
Is it not all mathematical, a matter of weight and line, of 
square and distance, and yet is not this rationalism the 
cause of the most wonderfully beautiful ritualism? Does 
it not give us the ritual of the rising and the setting 
of the sun and the ritual of the rotation of the seasons? 
Because of this I have come to think of the war between 
the rationalist and ritualist within the Church as a useless 
war; wasteful of spiritual energy; destructive of Christian 
charity. 


CHAPTER XXXIV 


THE RATIONALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 


HEN I reached the middle period of my ministry, 

W I came to have a depressing sense of the failure, 

not only of my own ministry, but also of the 
ministry of the Christian Church as a whole. I gave ex- 
pression to this depression in a sermon which I preached 
in the Third Presbyterian Church in the city of Rochester. 
My preaching in this church was a breach of church dis- 
cipline and significant of the fact that I was no longer a 
High-Churchman, holding that the Episcopal Church was 
the only church, the Episcopal ministry the only ministry of 
Christ in the city of Rochester. I was beginning to blush 
in my heart that I had ever held so presumptuous, so 
absurd a position. But this is the position held, practi- 
cally, to this day by the clergy of the Episcopal Church. 
They will fellowship neither with the ancient Catholic 
Church nor with the modern Protestant denominations: 
They look upon the Catholic Church as hopelessly corrupt 
and the Protestant denominations as schismatical and 
heretical. 

When it came to the ears of my bishop that I was pur- 
posing to preach in a Presbyterian church, he made post- 
haste to my rectory to forbid such profanation of my min- 
istry. But I told the bishop that the Third Presbyterian 
Church was within the confines of my parish and if these, 
my parishioners, were in the darkness of error it was my 
duty to dispel that darkness by the light of truth. I did 
not convince my bishop, but I preached my sermon in spite 


of his command forbidding such action, 
201 


202 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


I chose as my text the passage written in the ninth chap- 
ter of the Gospel according to Matthew at the 36th verse 
—‘‘But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with 
compassion on them because they fainted and were scat- 
tered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.” 

In my sermon I called attention to the fact that when 
Jesus uttered this complaint there was in all Jewry, in 
Palestine and in every land where the Jews were scattered 
abroad, a vast and elaborate machinery for doing the very 
work which Jesus said was so sadly neglected. In Jeru- 
salem there was the Temple of Jehovah with its attendant 
priests and Levites offering the morning and evening sacri- 
fice; while in Jerusalem itself, and in every city of the 
Gentiles where the Jews were resident, there were syna- 
gogues with their rabbis and their rulers to shepherd the 
people of God. 

But when Jesus came He found all this elaborate machin- 
ery a failure. In the Temple the priests and the Levites 
were enriching themselves and their friends by the sale of 
lambs and doves, at exorbitant prices, to the worshippers 
of Jehovah who came from far to sacrifice at the altar 
of their God; and the money-changers were asking high 
profit for the shekel of the Temple. Because of all this, 
Jesus said to these priests, Levites and money-changers, 
“It is written my House shall be called the House of 
Prayer but ye have made it a den of thieves.”’ 

In the synagogues the rabbis, the scribes and the lawyers 
were not teaching the people the way of love and truth 
and peace, but were sitting in the high places of the syna- 
gogue, well fed and richly clothed, lording it over the 
people and wrangling with one another as to which was 
the greatest commandment of the law. 

Then I made the assertion that the Christian Church, 
in all its branches, was open to the censure of Jesus far 
more than the Temple and the Synagogue of His time. 


THE RATIONALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 203 


While the Catholic Church was keeping the people 
entranced by a beautiful and sensuous worship—holding 
them in subjection by the fear of a literal purgatory of 
fire, out of which their beloved dead could only be de- 
livered by the sacrifice of the mass, for which a goodly 
price in coin was demanded—the Protestants were divid- 
ing and subdividing into little quarrelling sects, leaving the 
people a prey to the wolves of the business world. 

I said the vast, organized costly machinery of religion 
in the modern world was producing no adequate result. 

The Episcopal Church was, in fact, ministering to the 
rich and leaving the poor to perish in ignorance and 
poverty, and in this respect the Presbyterians were hardly 
second to the Episcopalians: The expensive churches of 
these denominations, with their high-salaried clergy and 
expensive choirs, lined the uptown avenues while they had 
only shabby chapels, if anything, in the poverty-stricken 
regions of the East Side. In fact, I declared that this 
whole vast machinery of Christianity in the Western world 
had broken down and was wearing itself out by friction, 
not grinding out the flour wherewith to make the bread 
of life, but only its own rust to poison the souls of men. 

The main reason for this failure of Christianity, es- 
pecially of Protestant Christianity, in my judgment, was 
the rationalization of the religion of Jesus—changing it 
from a mode of life into a form of doctrine. This process 
of rationalization began when the religion of Jesus, leav- 
ing its native heath of Galilee, entered the Greek-Roman 
world and was adapted to the uses of that world by the 
philosophers of Greece and the Roman lawyers. 

These men were won to the religion of Jesus by the 
purity of its life and the equality of its membership, adopt- 
ing with ardour its teachings of communism and pacifism, 
becoming its saints and its martyrs. They were, however, 
not content to leave it as they found it, but must forsooth 


204 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


recast it in the forms of Greek rationalism and Roman 
legalism. The Greek philosopher could not embrace the 
Galilean creed in its simplicity, but must explain that creed 
by the reasoning of the Greek dialectic, and so began that 
process of rationalizing the religion of Jesus until it ceased 
to be a religion and became a theology. This theologizing 
eventuated in the great conflict of the fourth century be- 
tween Arius the champion of primitive Christianity, and 
Athanasius, the champion of dogmatism, which ended in 
the destruction of the primitive communistic, pacifistic 
Church and the establishment of the rationalistic, impe- 
rialistic Catholic Church. And in that victory the Church 
and the world were made friends together and they have, 
in the main, been friends ever since. 

In the primitive age the scene of the triumph of Christ 
and His Church was to be on this earth. In the fullness 
of time Jesus was to return, descending even as He had 
ascended: he was to put down the mighty from their seat 
and exalt the humble and meek; He was to fill the hungry 
with good things and send the rich empty away. It was 
this hope that buoyed up the heart of the followers of 
Jesus for four hundred years; it is this hope that has lin- 
gered on, growing ever more and more feeble until now it 
has ceased to have any power over the mind and heart of 
mankind and man is supposed to pass at once from death to 
judgment, his fate to be determined not primarily by his 
moral character, but by his theological belief, and as the- 
ological belief decays, spiritual life decays with it. In the 
present capitalistic, militaristic age the teachings of Jesus 
can find no place, and the Christian Church, cut off from 
its rootage, is not only dying: it is dead. 


CHAPTER XXXV 


THE RITUALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 


religion of Jesus had suffered from the rationalizing 

process, to which it had been subjected by the Grecian 
philosophers, it had met with a greater disaster by its 
ritualization at the hands of the Roman lawyers. 

Religion in Italy had from the earliest period been an 
external religion. The Roman people were not gifted as 
were the Athenians with the power of ratiocination; they 
were not poetic nor philosophic; they were always prac- 
tical. Walter Pater says of their religion that it was not 
something to believe, nor yet something to be loved: it was 
something to be done at a certain time, in a certain place, 
in a certain way. The power of the Roman Church lies 
not in its creed, nor even in its worship properly so called, 
but in its ritual: it is by means of its ritual that it main- 
tains its ascendancy over its people. ‘These people are 
taught from their earliest years that their salvation depends 
upon their strict observance of the ritual of the Church. 
From the first the Roman Church has been a legalistic, 
ritualistic organization. This Church had little or nothing 
to do with the development and formulation of Christian 
doctrine; it received its theology ready-made from the 
East. The communistic-pacifistic way of life was also of 
Eastern origin. The Christian society in Rome at the 
first was not Roman but Jewish. It is to the Jews that 
the Christian Church owes, primarily, its communistic and 


pacifistic principles: these principles were laid down by the 
205 


| WENT on in my sermon to say that grievously as the 


206 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


great Hebrew prophets, Isaiah, Amos and Micah. ‘They 
were made fundamental by Jesus in His doctrine of the 
Kingdom of God. ‘The Christian society for the first four 
hundred years of its existence was true to these funda- 
mental teachings. The practical genius of Rome gave 
such efficiency to this mode of life that the Christian com- 
munity, in time, became so rich and powerful that it com- 
pelled the submission of the Empire to the Church. 

After this ascendancy of the Church its ministry became 
a priesthood and its ritual a law. From this period dates 
the domination of the priesthood over the people in the 
Roman Church. Never was there a more ingenuous sys- 
tem of tyranny invented by man. Salvation from eternal 
death was made to depend upon the observance of the 
ritual, and the ritual covered every essential of human life; 
it was necessary at the baptism of the new-born child and 
was essential at the burial of the dead: a child dying with- 
out baptism suffered eternal loss of the presence of God; 
an unblessed grave was the prey of devils. It was by 
means of the ritual that the priesthood kept mankind at 
a standstill for a thousand years. The cathedrals were 
the creation of the ritual for its proper and stately perform- 
ance. Attendance on the mass in the churches was 
obligatory. Certain prayers said before a certain shrine 
had special eficacy. Certain words said in a certain way 
were a safeguard against the chill and fever. 

This ritualistic system put in the hands of the priests 
and the Pope a power over the people such as was not 
wielded by the Magistrate or the King. The Magistrate 
could send a man to prison; the King could send him to 
the block; but these punishments were temporal, while the 
priests and the Pope held in their hands not only the keys 
of the dungeon and of death, but also the keys of purgatory 
and of hell. ‘The priests by the act of excommunication 
could deprive a man of all the benefits and blessings of the 


THE RITUALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 207 


ritual; the Pope by the interdict could desolate a nation. 
We of to-day can have no adequate conception of the times 
when the ritual ruled the world. It is still potent in the 
Catholic Church and it lingers out its dying life in the 
Protestant bodies. We still baptize our children and call 
on the ministers to bury our dead. 

In the second decade of the nineteenth century, just after 
the close of the Napoleonic wars, there was a great revival 
of the ritual in Western Europe. The Catholic Church 
furbished its rusty armour. lLecordaire roused in France 
an enthusiasm for Neo-Catholicism, while Keble, Newman, 
and Pusey attempted the catholicizing of the English 
Church. Enthusiastic young men and women were carried 
backward by this reactionary movement into the Middle 
Ages. Long-lost ritual was revived in the churches and 
Gothic architecture was used in the restoration of the old 
and in the building of new churches. The vital questions 
in those stirring times among the clergy were not concerned 
with doctrine nor conduct; they were questions of ritual. 

It was just at this time that England and the Western 
world were entering upon the industrial era: when men 
and women and children were working twelve hours a day, 
under conditions destructive of decency and life, in the 
factories and the mines, while the English clergy were so 
enmeshed in their ritualistic revival that they could not 
see, much less remedy, these growing evils. Ritualistic 
precision was carried to such a degree that a woman might 
with more safety commit a breach of the seventh Command- 
ment than a clergyman omit a prescription of the ritual. In 
this Catholic movement Christianity ceased more and more 
to be a way of life and degenerated into a ceremonial 
form. When I preached this sermon I naturally became 
in the eyes of my High Church brethren a traitor to my 


party. 


CHAPTER XXXVI 


THE SOCIALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 
A s from my place in the pulpit I looked on the up- 


turned faces of the people who crowded the pews 
of the Third Presbyterian Church on the occasion 
of my preaching, I was conscious of that elation which comes 
to every preacher in the presence of his audience. ‘There 
is in this elation not only an exalted sense of power, but also 
a sinful feeling of personal pride; my heart swelled with 
the vain thought that all these people had come to church 
to hear me preach. This is the besetting sin of the 
preacher which, unless he can lose it in the flow of his 
thought and the fervour of his preaching, ruins him as a 
preacher. A self-conscious preacher is a failure in the 
pulpit, and this is a disaster which neither the minister 
nor the church can long survive. In the Catholic Church 
the altar is the heart of the life of the church. When the 
priest is at the altar, God is in his hands and all the 
people are drawn to the altar by the presence of God. 
In the Protestant Church it is the preacher in his pulpit 
who proclaims that power of God which 1s the salvation 
of the world. ‘There can be no more august office than 
this to employ the energies of man; it is either profane as- 
sumption or divine audacity which permits a man to stand 
before his fellow men and say, ‘‘Thus saith the Lord.” 
A speaker to be effective must speak in the tongue of 
his hearers: If the language is foreign to the thought of 
the people the preaching is but as sounding brass and 


tinkling cymbal, a noise and not a word. As I looked down 
208 


THE SOCIALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 209 


on my congregation, it was my desire to tell them of the 
Lord Jesus and of His religion; to do this I must use 
words which came within their comprehension. It is my 
custom in preaching to pick out one man in the congrega- 
tion and watch his face and attitude as a gauge of the 
power of my speech to reach the heart and stir the mind 
of my congregation. 

On this night in the Third Presbyterian Church there 
was in the line of my vision a lawyer of high standing in 
his profession because of his native ability and great learn- 
ing. As I watched the face of this man I saw in it atten- 
tion, but not comprehension: he heard but he did not 
understand. ‘The reason for this—as I know too well— 
was that he did not understand the language of the Chris- 
tian Church: this language was evolved to describe the 
facts and express the thought of the Christian life. But 
this life was no longer lived; it was in all its essential as 
foreign to the modern world as the life of the man in the 
moon. Let us take one of the fundamental words of 
Christianity—the word “charity,” so nobly described by 
Paul in I Corinthians, xiii. When we hear the word 
“charity” it does not attract, it repels us. To be an object 
of charity is to suffer the last shame and degradation that 
can befall us: we think of asylums for old men and, as 
one New York institution has it, “homes for decayed 
gentlewomen.” ‘‘Charity,’’ in its modern significance, is 
a divisive word; it separates the rich from the poor: the 
rich bestow, the poor receive, charity. When a preacher 
uses the word ‘“‘charity” he calls up the vision of poor old 
Betsy curtsying to my Lady Bountiful, who brings her 
flannel and soup from the Great House. 

But in the language of Christianity the word “charity” 
has an entirely different meaning; it is not a divisive, it 
is a uniting word: it does not separate the Christian com- 
munity into the rich and the poor, the high and the low, 


210 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


but it unites them; it levels up and it levels down; it puts 
down the mighty from their seat and exalts the humble 
and meek. As Isaiah taught the Kings of Israel, the State 
exists for the sake of its weakest members. ‘The sublimest 
forces of the household gather about the cradle and the 
sick-bed. Every member of the household has the right 
to his seat at the family table. And there is the corollary 
principle that everyone who eats at the table must, accord- 
ing to his ability, furnish the table. “There must be in the 
Christian community no idle rich, no overworked poor. 

Now, all this is so foreign to our modern, so-called 
Christian civilization that it is set down as criminal; he 
who preaches it is a fool and a madman. And this was 
the doctrine which I was trying to preach to the learned 
lawyer. I was insisting that Christianity was not prima- 
rily a doctrine nor a ritual; it was a social order. And a 
social order cannot be orderly as long as it is composed of 
conflicting elements. Slavery is fatal to the social order be- 
cause of the necessary conflict between the master and the 
slave. Poverty and riches cannot live in peace together. 
The arrogance of the rich will for ever excite the envious 
hatred of the poor—landlordism and tenancy make posses- 
sion of the land an ugly bone of contention. 

That great Master of social science, Jesus of Nazareth, 
saw this truth with the clear vision of His prophetic soul. 
He saw that human society must be a society of equals. 
Each man must have his place in that social order as his 
right; each man must have his work in that social order 
as his duty. ‘There must be political equality. A society 
divided into classes of rulers and subjects, nobles and serfs, 
producers and consumers, cannot bring peace to mankind; 
the struggle of these classes has been the tragedy of the 
world. As I preached this doctrine from the pulpit of the 
Third Presbyterian Church, I could see by his face that 
it was entirely beyond the comprehension of the lawyer 


THE SOCIALIZATION OF CHRISTIANITY 201 


in his pew. His mind was not scientific; it was legalistic; 
his thought was governed, not by the eternal laws of God, 
but by the passing laws of men. And so it was with that 
great congregation. The almost unanimous verdict passed 
upon the sermon was that it was not practical. Poverty 
was practical, crime was practical, starvation was practical, 
extravagance and waste were practical, the arrogance of 
the rich and the cringing of the poor were practical: The 
Devil was a very practical gentleman, and Hell had all the 
requirements of a popular social resort. But economic 
comfort for all was not practical; forgiveness for sins was 
not practical; sobriety and continence were not practical. 
Equality of economic condition was not practical; God was 
a failure and heaven an illusion. Such, I was made to feel, 
was the judgment of my hearers upon my sermon. We 
were not living in the same country nor speaking the same 
language. Religion to them was the lip-service of God. 
Religion to me was the hand-service of man. Religion to 
them was a privilege. Religion to me was a responsibility; 
not that I was better or wiser than they, but I had been 
in a country which they had never visited, and had learned 
a language which was to them an unknown tongue. So 
far as I know, only one man was able to comprehend my 
message, and he told me that it was to him as if the 
roof of the church were lifted away and he saw the sun 
in the sky with all the planets moving each in its order 
about this centre of light and heat, the sun serving the 
planets and the planets holding the sun in its place. ‘This 
man became my friend and my disciple; held up my hands 
in the day of my battle and gave me and mine a roof to 
cover us when we were exiled from our home in the 


Church. 


CHAPTER XXXVII 
A DECADENT CHRISTENDOM 
i the summer of 1896, through the kindness of my 


parishioners, I went abroad and made the “grand 

tour” of Europe. The voyage over was very delight- 
ful; I had become a hardened sailor and every hour upon 
the sea was a joy to my soul. 

I reached Antwerp in safety after a ten days’ sail. 
Nothing was more charming in all my journey through 
Europe than the passage up the Scheldt; here the shores 
are lower than the river, which is diked to keep the waters 
from flooding the land. It is not my purpose to give a 
detailed account of my visit to the various cities of Europe 
(my time was spent chiefly in the cities), but only to re- 
marked those things which I saw that do not come under 
the purview of the ordinary traveller. Everyone sees not 
only with his own eyes, but also with his own mind. He 
interprets what comes within the range of his vision by his 
previous thoughts. Antwerp was interesting to me be- 
cause it was the first Catholic city which I had ever visited. 
I went to the cathedral and was charmed and excited by 
its architecture and by Rubens’ “Descent from the Cross.” 
I spent hours sitting in that building and meditating upon 
that picture. I also went to other churches, and every- 
where I saw that the people were very devout. The women 
thronged the various places of worship, bringing their 
votive candles and placing them before the various saints. 
I perceived that the Catholic Church was still in its medi- 


eval period in this Belgian city; modern thought had not 
212 


A DECADENT CHRISTENDOM 213 


disturbed the minds of these simple Belgian peasants. The 
Protestant Reformation had swept over the land and left it 
more Catholic than it was before. I was able to study me- 
dizvalism at first hand in this city. Among other things, I 
saw in all the churches a box for alms, which was labelled: 
‘For your friends in purgatory’’; and the people were con- 
tinually dropping money into these boxes. “They must have 
been a source of considerable revenue to the Church. 
This troubled me sorely; it presented a problem which I 
could not solve. Purgatory is a place in which the souls 
of men suffer purification from their earthly sins. They 
are obliged to stay there until the justice of God is satisfied; 
it would seem, then, that all human effort to relieve them 
from their sad state were vain. The justice of God in the 
nature of things cannot be purchased with money. ‘The 
doctrine of Indulgences had ruined the Church in the 
fifteenth century; it was because of this doctrine that 
Luther thundered and the great Catholic Church was dis- 
rupted, but the older portion of that Church still clung 
tenaciously to the ancient custom; it was too profitable to 
be abandoned. The poor of Catholic countries were still 
paying millions into the coffers of the Church to buy the 
pardon of their suffering relatives; it was not until the 
pontificate of Pius X that this pernicious custom was finally 
abandoned. I dwell upon this first experience in Catholic 
Europe because it is the underlying cause of the two great 
evils that have destroyed Western civilization. I will now 
carry my reader, as it were, by aeroplane from Antwerp to 
Naples. 

When I came to this city, I had, as a tourist, to make 
the visit to Mt. Vesuvius, which was then in eruption; that 
visit is always made in the night. By the time that I 
had come near the crater, I was so overcome that I did 
not dare to look down very long into the burning mass 
below, but returned almost immediately to the hotel on 


214 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the mountain, where we spent the night. In the grey of 
the morning, we returned by stage to Naples, and then 
I experienced a shock which affected decidedly my attitude 
toward the Church. Italy and especially Southern Italy, 
is crowded with churches, overrun with priests and nuns. 
There is a long street running from the foot of Vesuvius 
to the heart of the city. As we went through the streets, I 
saw the people preparing for the coming day; they were the 
poverty-stricken population of the country; they were out 
there in the open and mothers were cleaning lice out of 
the hair of their children. They were washing their 
rags and putting them on. ‘They had no sense of shame; 
the dignity of human nature was lost to them; never had 
so repulsive a sight sickened my soul, and I said to myself, 
if one tithe of the money that is spent to maintain the mul- 
titude of churches that throng the land and to support the 
multitude of priests and nuns that live upon the churches, 
were spent in the physical redemption of these people, this 
disgrace would never afflict the eye of the traveller who 
came to delight his soul in the marvellous beauty with which 
the great God had clothed the Italian land. I perceived 
at once that this poverty was the product of superstition. 

From Naples we will fly to London, and we will not 
visit any of the usual places that are the haunt of the 
tourist. We will simply go to Piccadilly Circus and walk 
the streets of that vicinity and we will see a sight that will 
make the bitter tears flow from our hearts, if not from our 
eyes. Piccadilly Circus, after eight o’clock at night, is Lon- 
don’s open market in the traffic in women. There women 
by the hundreds offer themselves for sale, and there men by 
the hundreds buy them. ‘The scene, itself, is not obnox- 
ious; the women are well dressed; to look at them you 
would suppose that they were of good quality. It is only 
when you are aware of what is going on that you class them 
where they belong. Nowhere in the world is that traffic so 


A DECADENT CHRISTENDOM 215 


open and unashamed as it was in the region of Piccadilly 
and Regent Street, in the year 1896. ‘The prostitution of 
woman was as much a part of the life of the city of London 
as the buying and selling of cotton goods. 

We will now take our plane and fly to Edinburgh and 
we will be the guests of my dear friend Donald Kennedy, 
and the reader is very fortunate to be the guest of so de- 
lightful a host, and hostess; he will have to be an iron man 
as to energy and strong-headed as to sobriety, for the 
Scotch are hard workers and drinkers and eaters. The 
hospitality begins at breakfast, which is none of your little 
Continental breakfasts of coffee and rolls, but a substantial 
meal of cold joints, toast, eggs and marmalade and such 
coffee as is never tasted on this side of the water. After 
breakfast your host and hostess carry you away to some 
of the interesting sights that make Edinburgh the wonder- 
ful city that it is. About one o’clock you are home to 
luncheon; this again is a very substantial feast. After 
luncheon you take your siesta; then you go out with Don- 
ald to the golf links and spend the afternoon. You come 
home, go to your room, rest awhile and then are called to 
afternoon tea. You are at liberty to do as you please 
until it is time to dress for dinner. Being a clergyman, 
I was always dressed for dinner; that is one advantage of 
the clerical profession. And a Scotch dinner is a dinner! 
You have your soups, your fish and meat and entrée, your 
desserts and your wines, all of which is made more palat- 
able by the delightful conversation that leaves you not a 
moment to think of what you are eating and drinking, and 
so you are present at an intellectual rather than a material 
feast. If you are visiting of a Saturday night, perhaps 
Donald will say to you, if you are a clergyman, “I wish you 
would take off that uniform of yours and put on these 
Scotch tweeds.’”? Which you obediently do. Then Don- 
ald hands you a big stick and you go down with him 


216 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


through the ravine and up the hill-side into the Old Town, 
till you come to the Haymarket and the Canongate, and 
there you see what will remain with you till the end of your 
days. On Saturday night all of the Old Town gives way 
to a debauch; that night I saw at least ten thousand men, 
women and children lying dead drunk in the streets. 
There was one lodging-house in which the men were so 
close together that we had to step on them to get through 
the room. A more appalling sight than this I have never 
seen; human degradation in that city of light, religious and 
secular, reached the lowest point possible for human 
nature. 

The next morning being the Sabbath day, you and Don- 
ald will, of course, go to church and hear a sermon by some 
distinguished Protestant divine. In that sermon you will 
not hear the slightest allusion to the sinfulness which 
frightened you the night before. The minister will dis- 
course learnedly of some theological doctrine. At dinner 
you and Donald will discuss the problem presented to you 
by the drunkenness and degradation of Saturday night and 
the piety and respectability of Sunday morning, and you 
will conclude that there is no present solution of that prob- 
lem. Donald will say that it is the outcome of human 
nature; you will afirm that it is the product of social 
organization. 

I have given my reader no details of the “grand tour”; 
he has doubtless made that tour himself and has seen all 
the usual sights. What I saw was a society afflicted with 
a fatal disease; a disease manifesting itself in superstition, 
poverty, prostitution and drunkenness. I came away with 
the firm conviction that unless Christian civilization re- 
pented and applied a remedy for these evils, Christian civ- 
ilization was doomed, and in our day this doom has fallen 
upon it. 


CHAPTER XXXVIII 


A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCHES 


HEN the “grand tour’ was over and I was home 

\) \ again face to face once more, not with the prob- 

lems of Europe, but with the sin and sorrow of 
my own land, the first thing I did was to clear up my desk. 
Among the matters awaiting my attention was an invita- 
tion from the Canadian Society of Christian Unity to 
address that society at their annual meeting which was to 
be held in the city of Toronto in the near future. My sub- 
ject was left to my own choosing, except that it was to 
deal with the problem of Christian Unity, to the securing of 
which this society was devoting its energies. The mem- 
bership of this association embraced Protestantism in all 
its varieties. Catholicism had its own remedy for a di- 
vided Christendom, which was submission to the Pope as 
the head of the Church. The Protestant bodies were not 
ready to accept this easy solution of the problem; nor was I. 
In the interval between my acceptance of this invitation and 
the meeting of the society, I gave to the subject severe 
study and intense thought. 

Calling to mind the prayer of Jesus on the night of His 
betrayal, as it is written in the Gospel of St. John, in the 
seventeenth chapter, where the Lord, after praying espe- 
cially for His disciples, with whom He was eating the Pass- 
over, said, ‘‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them 
also which shall believe in me through their word: That 
they all may be one, as Thou, Father, art in me and [ in 


Thee: That they also may be one inus: That the world 
217 


218 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


may believe that Thou has sent me’—I say, recalling this 
prayer and then beholding the wretched divisions of Chris- 
tendom, I was moved with compassion for the Lord and 
chose for the subject of my lecture: ‘The Disappoint- 
ment of Jesus Christ.” 

Contrary to my usual custom, this lecture was carefully 
written out and I read it in the ears of the people in the 
Lord’s House as Baruch the Scribe, in his day, read the 
word of the prophet Jeremiah in the ears of the people in 
the Lord’s House on the Fasting-Day, and my scripture 
had somewhat the same reception as that of the ancient 
prophet—it made too great a demand on the faith and 
love of the hearers! 

When I reached home I published this lecture as a tract, 
under its title, and sent it out to the press: It immediately 
attracted attention and roused discussion. The Ascension 
Parish Record describes it as follows: 


“THE DISAPPOINTMENT OF JESUS CHRIST 


“Under this title, the Rev. Algernon S. Crapsey, Rector of St. 
Andrew’s Church, Rochester, N.Y., has published a notable essay 
on the subject of Church Unity. The disappointment of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, Mr. Crapsey argues, 1s because His great prayer for the 
oneness of His chosen people has not been answered. ‘The condition 
of the world in our Lord’s time was one of discord and disunion. 
His plan was to unify men in God and in one another. ‘This plan 
was successful so far as the Early Church was concerned, and in the 
production of our historic Christian civilization. Yet in the Church 
itself, since the fourth century it has been attended with comparative 
failure by reason of divisions. Mr. Crapsey points as the causes of 
this failure in unity two false and inadequate theories of unification; 
first, that the unity of the Church centres in her own official organi- 
zation; second, that it centres in her own formal doctrine. ‘The rem- 
edy is to return to Jesus’ plan, and unify the Church in God and in 
humanity. 

“We commend this pamphlet (published by the author at twenty 


A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCHES 219 


cents per copy) to the careful perusal of all who can obtain it. If 
it does not elicit our agreement, it will at least provoke thought. We 
cannot refrain from extracting in full the Appendix, in which the 
lines along which the author looks for progress in unification are 
stated with unusual clearness and force. They are as follows: 

“First. The subordination of the official organization of the 
Church, from the highest to the lowest of its members to the Church 
itself, as practised in the Primitive Church, as decreed by the Western 
Church in the Council of Constance, and as affirmed by the principles 
of the Protestant Reformation. 

“Second. The pastoral rather than the priestly conception of the 
ministry. It is the office of the ministry to bring the people to God, 
rather than to be to the people instead of God. 

“Third. ‘The statement of Christian Doctrine so that it will be 
in accord with the facts of the visible universe, as these are discovered 
and formulated by the processes of inductive thought. The earth’s 
form and motion, man’s place in the earth, his past history and pres- 
ent condition, are matters for scientific investigation and settlement. 

“Fourth. ‘The statement of Christian Doctrine so that it will not 
conflict with the great primal instincts of the human heart; the in- 
stinct for justice, mercy and truth. No man will be compelled to 
believe such a doctrine as that of everlasting punishment as taught by 
St. Augustine in ‘The City of God,’ or the doctrine of predestination 
as taught in “The Institutes of Calvin.’ 

“Fifth. Absolute intellectual freedom within the Church, so that 
every opinion shall have a hearing, and be taken for what it is worth; 
to have the force of its author’s personal character, learning and wis- 
dom; and to establish itself by its own truthfulness or not at all. 

“Sixth. The submission of the entire content of Christian tradi- 
tion, both oral and written, to the trained intelligence, that the con- 
tent, meaning and value of the whole and of each part may be ascer- 
tained, correctly estimated and set forth. “That those things which 
are not shaken may remain.’ 

“Seventh. ‘The restoration of the Church’s moral discipline as the 
only true basis of her spiritual life.” 


The Reverend Percy Stickney Grant is the rector of the 
parish of the Church of the Ascension, New York. 


220 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


The Literary Digest of December 16, 1899, carried the 
following comments: 


“An argument for church unity of unusual quality and compre- 
hensiveness comes from the Rev. Algernon S. Crapsey, Rector of a 
Protestant Episcopal Church in Rochester, N. Y., who has been iden- 
tified with a somewhat advanced school of Anglo-Catholicism. Fol- 
lowing the same lines as those laid down in an article quoted in these 
columns from the Outlook (See the Literary Digest, June 17), he 
holds that the coming century will witness a great unification of 
Christendom, but that it will not be doctrinal or ecclesiastical in its 
basis. Christ’s prayer was for the unity of all His followers, says 
Dr. Crapsey (in an address before the Canadian Society of Christian 
Unity at Toronto), and ‘the disappointment of our Lord Jesus Christ 
because His great prayer has not been answered, His own chosen peo- 
ple are not one,’ may well make us pause and think. Dr. Crapsey’s 
opinion of the present religious condition of the world is quite dif- 
ferent from that of Count Tolstoy. ‘The world is, in a certain true 
sense, Christian, he thinks: “The great fact of present history is the 
domination of Christendom over the rest of the world.’ ‘It is not the 
world over which our Lord is at the present moment grieving—with 
the world at large He has every reason to be satisfied; it is the 
Church which has disappointed Him.’ “The Church is no longer 
a centre of unity to the world because it has no unity in itself.’ 
“To-day the Christian religion seems to be the one disintegrating 
force in the world.’ The Evangelist (Presb., November 23) thus 
comments on Dr. Crapsey’s address: 

‘“““These somewhat unexpected propositions are supported by a 
rather striking historic argument, in the course of which Mr. Crapsey 
shows that the disunion of Christendom is the outgrowth of two erro- 
neous assumptions: ‘That the Church’s unity centres in her own 
official organization, an error shared alike by Papal, Episcopal, and 
Presbyterian Churches, and that the unity of the Church centres in 
her own formal doctrine. The two theories are themselves harmo- 
nious and both have worked together to disintegrate the Church and 
to disappoint the Lord. ‘The second principle has, however, been far 
more disintegrating in its tendency than the first. 

““*The historic argument is briefly this. In the first four Chris- 


A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCHES 221 


tian centuries the Church was really one; Christian unity was a fact 
because the main purpose of the Church was a moral purpose—to 
discipline life, to make men pure and just and kind. In this she 
succeeded marvellously; the moral renovation of society during these 
centuries is something beyond all else that the history of civilization 
has to show. But since that time “the main purpose of the Church 
has been to discipline intellect,’ and here again the disintegrating 
process; the unity of the Church was gone. 

“ “Tt would be too long to follow Mr. Crapsey through his study 
of the progress of the attempt to discipline the human intellect 
through the ever more and more precise formulation of doctrine,. and 
of the revolt of the intellect against this discipline. “That revolt has 
been successful since the Renaissance in the realm of art and letters, 
and since the dawn of science in the realm of physical fact. There 
still remains that realm of thought which has to do with man’s rela- 
tion to God and to the world to come, and here the official organiza- 
tion of the Church, whatever its form or name, is still dominant, and 
here, therefore, the revolt is still active. ‘Iwo consequences follow. 
A certain number of men question, and the official organization con- 
demns them and casts them out; the vast unthinking mass do not 
question, and to them the statements are as dead letters, they are re- 
ceived but they are not assimilated.” Up to this time the reply of the 
Church to this revolt has been a new attempt to control the intellect, 
by a more elaborate and accurate definition of the articles of faith.’ 

“The Evangelist remarks that this thought has much suggestiveness 
for Presbyterians, whose General Assembly has twice within a few 
years restated and more closely defined the doctrines of Presbyterian- 
ism, yet ‘its tendency was just so far divisive as its statements were 
more precise or more sweeping than the creed it professed to interpret.’ 
The Evangelist continues: 

“ “But though there is no hope of centring the Church in her own 
intellectual statements, there is still a hope of the unity of the Church 
in a love of truth and in a realization of God. (Already there is a 
great unity in which all Christians are one. It is a “union in God.”’) 
To this unity two elements must co-operate: ‘‘Absolute intellectual 
freedom within the Church” and “the restoration of the Church’s 
moral discipline as the only true basis of her spiritual life.” 

‘“‘*How this moral discipline is to be exercised Mr. Crapsey does 


222 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


not say, but he would doubtless refer us to the example of the early 
Church for his reply. It was the flashing of moral light into the 
human soul that drove out moral darkness, and with this went the 
stern refusal to fellowship with those who were not in fellowship with 
Christ in pure and honest and upright living. 

“ “Tt would be difficult to imagine what Christendom would be like 
if a great zeal of morality of life should suddenly displace the present 
zeal for conformity to doctrinal standards; whereof no man should 
be called to suffer for his opinions, but every man should be held to 
strict account for his conduct; if the right to investigate, to ascertain 
and correctly estimate ‘‘the entire content of Christian tradition, both 
oral and written,” should be recognized, but no man of dubious mor- 
als or of questionable integrity should be reckoned a brother. Society 
would be as much transformed as it was in the early centuries when 
the Christian religion wrought so marvellous a change.’ ” 


William R. Huntington, of Grace Church, sent me the 
following letter which shows the hopelessness of the cleri- 
cal mind: | 


“Dictated. 
“Grace Church Rectory 
“New York 
“November 6th, 1899. 
“DEAR Mr. CRAPSEY: 

“To the seven articles of the Appendix to your ‘Tractate,’ I yield 
not only entire assent but enthusiastic adhesion. If you are right in 
thinking that ‘High-Churchmen’ throughout the country are ready to 
stand by this summary of principles (than which I have never seen a 
better), a bright day has dawned for Christian Unity in the United 
States. You can do in that direction vastly more than I. Although 
I have championed these principles now these thirty years last past, 
and championed them on the ground of their being the highest of all 
High -Church principles, the High-Churchmen have steadily given 
me the cold shoulder, partly, I suppose, because of my having been 
‘born out of due time,’ before the wave of Anglo-Catholicism had 
crested, as it is now doing, and partly because the plainness of my 
taste in matters of ritual has been an offence in the eyes of those who 


A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCHES 22% 


cared much for candles and colours. Having been under suspicion 
of Puritanism, my words have fallen largely upon deaf ears. It will 
not be so with yours in that direction. 

“The only point on which I find myself disposed to criticize the 
contents of your Tractate is under the doctrinal head. It appears to 
me, I confess, that your waiver of creed-forms is a little too sweeping. 
I know you do not mean your words to apply to the baptismal symbol, 
but I am greatly afraid that by the casual reader they will be under- 
stood as doing so. Of ‘systems’ we have had enough and too many, 
but surely there must be a minimum statement of the things commonly 
believed among us, if we are not to be all at sea. How can we, for 
instance, rally around the person of the Saviour, as you exhort us to 
do, unless we have the word-image of Him which the Apostles’ Creed 
provides? Of course, you intended your strictures to apply to ‘con- 
fessions,’ the thirty-nine articles, and the like, but they will be mis- 
interpreted as ruling out even the most elementary forms of faith. 

“* “Who shall show thee words,’ said the angel, ‘whereby thou and 
all thy house shall be saved?’ ‘Words’ of that sort we certainly are 
bound to conserve in tolerably clear-cut shape. 

“Kindly send me by express (paid here) one hundred copies of the 
“Tractate,’ for which I enclose a cheque. 

“Tf there is any way in which IJ can help the cause in your direction, 
do not fail to command me. 


“With hearty sympathy, I am, 
“Faithfully yours, 
“W. R. HuNTINGTON.” 


The secular press entered into the discussion both by 
editorial and by letters to the press. I followed up the 
original tract by a tract on each of the seven points. The 
tract on the second point was called ‘““The Answer to Pi- 
late.’ Of this the New York Tribune wrote as follows: 


mURU LHOAND AU THOR ERY 


‘““A few weeks ago we noted the appearance of a remarkable trac- 
tate by an Episcopal clergyman of Rochester, the Rev. Algernon S. 
Crapsey, in which he contended that the office-bearers in the Church 


224. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


—that is, the clergy—have no right to identify the Church with them- 
selves, and controverted the theory that Christian unity can be at- 
tained by insisting on an absolute uniformity of belief. He now fol- 
lows this with another tractate, entitled “The Answer to Pilate,’ 
which, coming from a representative High Church Episcopalian, will 
doubtless excite widespread discussion. His general proposition is 
that Christian doctrine to-day needs to be restated in such a way that 
it will be in accord with the facts of the visible universe, as ascer- 
tained by scientific investigation. “There are two ways in which such 
a restatement might be made. First, it might be gathered from the 
utterances of individual religious thinkers who feel themselves in- 
spired to proclaim some truth to the world. The credential of any 
such utterance is the truth it contains. Its reward to those who ac- 
cept it is that they shall have the truth; its penalty, if they reject it, 
that they shall lose it. 

“Or, the proposed restatement might be formulated by some syn- 
odical body duly representing the ecclesiastical organization. A creed 
so formulated does not rest, of course, on its own inherent truthful- 
ness, but must be enforced by a power external to itself. And men 
are called upon to believe it, not necessarily because it is true, but 
because it has been promulgated by a given authority. As between 
these two sources of religious belief, Mr. Crapsey declares for the 
former. “To it,’ he says, “we owe the whole body of religious truth 
which we have in the world. No council ever added to the sum of 
truth; all that it has ever claimed to do is to arrange and interpret 
the truth already in existence.’ In other words, ‘truth is never 
discovered in committee.’ When the medieval Church became cor- 
rupt the attempt was made to reform it by corporate action, but it 
failed; and it was left for an individual first to formulate the beliefs 
that have revolutionized the world.” 


Seth Low, then president of Columbia College, and a 
warden of St. George’s Church, not only became an ardent 
disciple of my teaching, but also a warm personal friend; 
a relationship that continued to the day of his death. Ad- 
hesions came in from every quarter and at first it seemed 
as if we were on the eve of the reunion of Christendom. 
But it was not to be; it could not be! If nothing else; the 


A CHALLENGE TO THE CHURCHES PaaS 


vested interests of the clergy in their spiritualities and tem- 
poralities forbade it. Because Dr. Huntington loved the 
creed more than he desired unity, he fell away and was 
one of the judges who finally condemned me as a heretic. 
As a consequence of this a divided Christendom was help- 
less in the presence of its enemies and has suffered a com- 
plete overthrow. 


CHAPTER XXXIX 


SPIRITUAL SOIL AND SUNLIGHT 


P “HE publication of the tracts on the subject of Chris- 

tian Unity expelled me automatically from the 

High Church party in the Episcopal Church and 
cast me with the extreme Broads. ‘The consequence was 
that I had invitations to speak before various bodies of 
liberal Christians without regard to denomination. Among 
these invitations was one from the New York State Con- 
gress of Religions which was to meet in the city of New 
York at a given date. I accepted this invitation. The 
subject assigned me was “The Unorganized Forces of Re- 
ligion.”’ JI laid this invitation aside, went about my busi- 
ness and forgot all about it. Looking over my files one 
morning, I was astounded to find that the meeting in New 
York was to take place in four days and I had not made 
the slightest preparation to meet this engagement. 

I sat down at my desk, gazed at the title of my subject 
and it conveyed to me no meaning whatever. I searched 
my mind and found that I had not the slightest conception 
of what the unorganized forces of religion were. Leaving 
my desk, I went out and walked for several hours trying 
to find some clue that would lead into the matter with 
which I had to deal; but nothing came to me. I spent the 
next day in the same hopeless condition. I took the night 
train to New York, reaching that city the day before the 
meeting of the congress, hoping that in the great city I 
might find a hint that would indicate what these unorgan- 


ized forces were. I was not disappointed. As I was 
226 


SPIRITUAL SOIL AND SUNLIGHT 22/7 


walking idly along the streets, I watched the street-cleaners 
at work; I saw them gathering the refuse of the street into 
piles; then throwing that refuse into carts, and upon inves- 
tigation I found that this refuse was carried down to the 
bay where it was unloaded into scows, then taken to the 
lower bay and dumped. As soon as I saw this operation, 
I slapped my thigh and said to myself, ‘““My puzzle is in 
the way of solution.” In the night, as I was walking up 
Fifth Avenue, a well-dressed woman approached me and 
offered me the hospitality of her room for the night. I 
was obliged politely to decline. Before I reached. my 
hotel, I had similar offers from various women, and [ said 
to myself, “Behold the unorganized forces of religion!” 
The next day, having no time in which to prepare a 
written paper, I was obliged to make notes and these 
notes were not made on paper. I first bought me a glass, 
then a napkin; then I went into a flower store and bought 
a couple of daisies; then I bought me two apples. I filled 
my glass with refuse from the streets; I wrapped this glass 
in my napkin; I cut one apple and took out the seed, leav- 
ing the other apple whole; then I put all of these into my 
little handbag and, so equipped, made my way to the hall 
in which the State Congress of Religions was to assemble. 
I listened to the various papers which were read before 
the congress; they were all of them very learned and ab- 
stract; there were two papers on each subject; my mate 
was Dr. Dole, of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. In his 
opening paragraph he gave up the problem. He said: 


“T cannot really find any unorganized forces of religion. Force is 
a form of life; and it seems to be everywhere the nature of force 
to move in the lines of order, to construct, to work out organization. 
Here, for example, is the vast and mysterious force of electricity. 
Do we think of it as an amorphous mass, a mere reservoir from 
which we draw supplies for our dynamos? No. It exists in or- 
derly motion. Gravitation itself is not more truly involved in the 


228 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

very organization of the universe. I shall assume, then, that when 
we speak of the unorganized forces of religion, we really mean 
those religious forces which we do not happen to have installed 
upon our various ecclesiastical dynamos. ‘They are the forces which 
exist apart from or outside of churches; they simply do not fall 
under the conventional or traditional names of religion.” 


When my name was called, I ascended the platform, 
placed my bag on the table before me and said to the audi- 
ence that I was at great loss as to the manner in which I 
might treat the subject assigned to me; it was difficult to 
know what the unorganized forces of religion were. I 
had not been able to prepare a written paper, but I had 
made notes and should speak to them from the notes; I 
then opened my bag and took out the various articles which 
it contained, placing them upon the desk before me. Un- 
covering the glass, I told my audience that I had gathered 
the contents of it from the gutters of the street, that I had 
seen the scavengers of the city gathering this refuse and 
carting it down to the bay where it was put in scows, which 
carried it to the lower bay, where it was dumped into the 
water. These scavengers and the city at large were under 
the impression that they were getting rid of this refuse, 
but they were sadly mistaken; they could not get rid, finally, 
of one single particle of it; their manner of disposing of 
it was making of it a greater danger to the city than if it 
had been left to rot in the streets of the city. The heavier 
portions of it were filling up the lower bay and preventing 
ocean steamers from coming to their wharves in the city. 
The lighter portion of it was floating out to sea and was 
carried around to Coney Island and destroying the value 
of the watering-places along the coast of Long Island. 
The folly of this method of disposing of these street sweep- 
ings was intensified by the fact that these wiseacres were 
throwing away immense values; this refuse contained the 
unorganized forces of life. If it were carried into the 


SPIRITUAL SOIL AND SUNLIGHT 229 


country and scattered over the ploughed fields, it would 
enrich the ground in which the husbandman, sowing his 
seed, would ensure an abundant harvest, and I said to 
them, ‘This which I have shown you is a parable.” 

I then told them of the experience that I had had in the 
streets of their city the night before; how I had been ap- 
proached by various women with offers of hospitality, and 
I said to them that I had read in the morning paper that 
there was a raid being made upon these women under the 
leadership of the Episcopal Bishop of New York to drive 
them out of the city, but this effort did not get rid of a 
single one of these women; it only changed their place. A 
certain clergyman once said to me, “Mr. Crapsey, there 
isn’t a single woman of ill fame left in the Tenth Ward; 
I have gotten rid of every one of them.” I said, ‘‘What 
have you done with them?” He answered, “I have driven 
them all over into the Eighteenth Ward’; at which I 
smiled. You may ask me, “What has all this to do with 
the unorganized forces of religion?’ I answer, ‘These 
are the Unorganized Forces of Religion.” Religion or- 
ganizes the great primal passions of man; lust and avarice, 
fear and hate and love are the forces that create all re- 
ligion. These passions not only create religion, but they 
lie at the base of life itself and are the cause of all its 
manifestations. The harlot and the thief and the mur- 
derer are moved by exactly the same passions that influence 
the lives of the saints. The stately matron in all her pride 
is ruled by the same primal desires that her sister in the 
street sells to the passer-by. 

The one effectual way of removing this menace from 
society is to convert these primal passions to their proper 
uses; if instead of making a raid to drive them out of the 
streets, the good Bishop of New York had gathered these 
women into his churches and provided first for their mate- 
rial wants, then, by sowing in their hearts the seed of 


230 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


righteousness and watering that seed with the rain of hu- 
man sympathy, he would have converted their evil into 
good. Those women would no longer have been women 
of the streets, but they would have been saints of God. 
And so should we deal with all this refuse of humanity. 
If religion is to grow, it must be planted deep in the soil 
of the primal passions of mankind. It must take account 
of lust and avarice, fear and hate; it must live with these 
in order to convert them. This is what Jesus did. I love 
to think of Him as sitting in what we would call a saloon, 
drinking His glass of wine and eating His morsel of bread; 
and as the harlots and drunkards of the time gathered 
about Him, I would hear Him telling them the lovely story 
of the Prodigal Son, not preaching at them, but winning 
them by the glory of His face and the lovingness of His 
words, to become His disciples. It was from such as these 
that the early Christian Church gathered its membership. 
Jesus made of the harlot Magdalene a saint of God, a saint 
that has been worshipped by Christians ever since, and the 
first to enter the new kingdom established by the Cross 
was a thief. 

I pointed out that the failure of the Churches lay in the 
fact that they had not their roots in these primal passions. 
The Protestant Churches especially had withdrawn entirely 
from the muck of humanity and planted themselves in the 
arid soil of its respectability. Fifth Avenue was lined with 
churches of the Episcopal denomination and there was not 
one in Pell Street. “The Catholic Church flourished be: 
cause it still ministered to the outcasts of humanity and 
had its home in the midst of the sinners, but the Catholic 
Church was failing because its windows were not open to 
receive the pure air of heaven, nor did it allow the sunlight 
of truth to fall upon the lives of its people. This is 
equally true of the Protestants; there are three things nec- 
essary to life: first, the soil; second, the seed, and then 


SPIRITUAL SOIL AND SUNLIGHT 221 
the ministry of heaven sending its sunlight and its rain. 


I spoke for about an hour. When I had finished and 
was gathering together my notes, I was conscious of a 
stillness in the room; there had been no response to my 
talk from the beginning to the end; my method had evi- 
dently taken my hearers by surprise. But after an in- 
stant’s silence, the audience gave expression to their feeling 
in a wild clapping of hands that lasted for many minutes. 
The next morning the New York Sun gave a full account 
of my address that went throughout the country. 

This event in my life brought to me a group of friends 
who, from that day to this, have enriched my life. The 
report of the New York Sun was widely copied; an extract 
from it found its way into a little paper published in one 
of the Southern States; this paper spelled my name 
‘““Champney” and gave my residence as Brooklyn, N.Y. 
It fell into the hands of Mr. George Foster Peabody. 
Mr. Peabody was deeply interested in the thought; on 
reaching his home in Brooklyn, he asked his rector, Dr. 
McConnell, of Trinity Church, Brooklyn, if he knew any 
person by the name of Champney. Dr. McConnell knew 
no such person, but when Mr. Peabody made known his 
reason for wanting to find the man, Dr. McConnell told 
him that the person he was looking for was Dr. Algernon 
S. Crapsey, of Rochester, N.Y. Mr. Peabody at once 
wrote me a highly appreciative letter, and that was the 
beginning of a friendship which still endures and will en- 
dure as long as we are both upon the earth. Through 
Mr. Peabody, I came to know intimately Mr. Edward M. 
Shepard, Mr. Spencer Trask and that wonderful woman, 
his wife, known to the literary world as Katrina Trask. 
I lost the friendship of Dr. Dix and made Bishop Potter 
my enemy. 


CHAPTER XL 


TIME PASSES 


HEN I entered upon the rectorship of St. An- 

W drew’s parish on the first day of June, 1879, it 

was, as I have said, prophesied that I would not 
stay there a year. I myself did not think that I could 
make it my life-work. It had many of the conditions that 
I desired, but the hindrances were so great that I felt that 
it might not be within my power to overcome them. But 
day after day my wife and I went on with our work, and 
days became years, until at last we had filled out our quar- 
ter of a century. By that time, we had so worked our 
own lives into the life of the community, of which we were 
a part, that any change would have been disastrous. ‘The 
reason for our constancy was that we had nowhere else to 
go; I was not the kind of man that the rich and fashionable 
congregations desired, nor had I the qualities that win for 
a man the bishopric. I did, indeed, once come under the 
shadow of that high office, but feeling myself unequal to 
it, I instantly withdrew my name from the body that had 
it under consideration. 

When the day and the year came round that marked 
the twenty-fifth anniversary of our arrival, the parish cele- 
brated it for a week. The anniversary sermon was 
preached by my friend, the Reverend Doctor Elwood Wor- 
cester, then and now rector of Emmanuel Church, Boston. 
Doctor Worcester was a child of St. Andrew’s; he went 
from us to Columbia College and from there to the semi- 


nary and finished his education in Germany. He has for 
232 


TIME PASSES 233 


years been among the most eminent divines of the Episco- 
pal Church; he is the leader of the Emmanuel Movement 
and a profound student of psychic phenomena. In his 
sermon he naturally eulogized the subject of his discourse 
and compared him to Luther and Savonarola, and we all 
jeered. The rector of St. Andrew’s is quite sure that he 
cannot in any wise be compared with the great Saint of 
Florence. As to Luther, he is not so sure; he is quite as 
pugnacious as that reformer and quite as self-assertive. 
The week following the Sunday celebration was one of 
parish festivities. My friend, George Foster Peabody, 
came up from New York to join in our celebration. ‘The 
parish came together on a given evening, presented the 
rector with a letter of commendation; with a loving-cup 
containing coins of gold and silver, and one parishioner 
bestowed upon him a check amounting to $100 for each of 
the years that he had served the parish. This was not 
only a parochial, it was a city affair; congratulations came 
in from the clergy of the city, not only of the Episcopal 
Church but of all the churches, including the Catholic. 
The thought of the city was summed up by a short editorial 
in the Evening Times, headed ‘Doctor Crapsey’s Anni- 
versary’: 


‘There is one simple thing to be said on the anniversary of Dr. 
Crapsey’s coming to Rochester. He has been a power for good in 
the community for twenty-five years. He has preached strongly; 
he has sympathized strongly and he has wrought strongly; and he has 
influenced the private and public life of the city without going be- 
yond his sphere as a clergyman. He has kept clear of political 
entanglements and movements for reform by the mere agitation of 
the surface of things, but day by day the circle of his personal 
power has been widening here and elsewhere. He is a bold man 
and a positive man, but it may be said that his personality has been 
a source of religious peace; for even where he entered into con- 
troversy, it was in the cause of liberality, and he has ever been 


234. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


disposed to welcome him as a brother who works sincerely toward 
the betterment of the individual and of society.” 


At the conclusion of these festivities, accompanied by 
my friend, John Warrant Castleman, I went by the Cana- 
dian Line to England to spend my vacation walking 
through Wales, and this period was of great educational 
value. Mr. Castleman was a man of high intelligence and 
at that time devoted to the liberal view of religion and pol- 
itics. He desired earnestly a reformation both in Church 
and State, and our discussions were helpful to me, as they 
enabled me to formulate thoughts that had been floating 
in my mind; and if, soon after our return to Rochester, I 
fell into bad ways, my friend Mr. Castleman was much to 
blame, for he had urged me on. But our walk through 
Wales had a higher import than anything that could come 
from the human mind. In this wonderful country we were 
in the presence of the divinities. Take it for all in all, of 
the various countries which I had visited, Wales is the most 
entrancing; it is impossible to describe it. I remember 
vividly our walk across the great moor. We left Denbigh 
early in the morning and spent the day on the moor. The 
sky was louring, which added to the mystery of the scene; 
the treeless moor, stretching on every side, seemed an in- 
finity of desolation. There was a slight drizzle of rain 
from time to time, which, while it made for our discom- 
fort, did not at all take away from the pleasure of our 
journey. It was toward nightfall that we reached the end 
of our journey and came to the village of Penthrea Voilas 
and found ourselves at home in the Voilas Arms. We 
were greeted by the hostess of the inn as if we had been 
friends of a lifetime. We were shown at once to a bath, 
a rare thing in an English inn, and after we had made our- 
selves ready, we sat down to a dinner fit for the gods. We 
had mountain lamb and green peas, vegetables of various 
kinds, and all this was served, not by a waiter standing be. 


TIME PASSES 235 


hind our chair, but by the hostess herself, who would insist 
upon our taking this little tit-bit and that little tit-bit, until 
I loved Mother Roberts as if she were, indeed, my mother, 
and I determined if ever I came to Europe again I would 
surely spend a part of my time at Penthrea Voilas. 

In the morning we continued our journey and we walked 
through the most picturesque region of the country, the 
names of which I will not dare to write. We made a 
wrong turning about ten o'clock in the morning and had to 
come back on our way, so that by nightfall we were ready 
to rest; at least, Mr. Castleman was. He stopped at 
Bettys-Coed; I went on, he promising to take the stage and 
follow. I walked as far as Penny Pass, which I reached 
at about ten o'clock in the evening. About an hour later, 
Mr. Castleman came on in the stage; when he inquired if 
such a person as I had arrived, the hostess answered in the 
affirmative and she added, “I think he has gone out for a 
bit of a walk.” This amazed Castleman. I had already 
walked between thirty and forty miles that day, and if I 
were still walking I must be a superman. But I was found 
safely asleep in my bed, and the next morning we ascended 
Snowdon, expecting to have a vision of the country from 
the top of the mountain, but we saw nothing that day be- 
cause of the fog. The next morning was clear and we did 
have the joy of seeing the mountains of Wales from this 
higher peak. We came down from the mountain, contin- 
ued our journey through Wales and the West of England, 
went to Liverpool, and so came home. 


CHAPTER XLI 


THE PHILIPPINE EPISCOPATE 


HE conquest of the Philippine Islands was a by- 
product of the Spanish-American War. The 
United States intervened by force of arms to de- 
liver the Cubans from the misrule of the Government of 
Spain and, as an accident of that conflict, subjected the peo- 
ple of these Eastern islands to the rule of the Government 
of the United States. “This seemed to me then, as it seems 
to me now, one of the saddest miscarriages of history. 
The Filipinos were at that time in rebellion against the 
misrule of Spain and, if they had been let alone, would 
have accomplished their independence. ‘The war of the 
United States against Spain was professedly altruistic. 
The Federal Government was seeking no territorial nor 
other material advantage. By resolution of the Congress 
Cuba was assured of independence. ‘The great American 
Republic was to use its irresistible force to deliver a neigh- 
bouring people from intolerable bondage; it was to sweep 
away the last vestige of European rule from the Western 
continent. ‘This resolution of the Congress signed by 
the President thrilled the American heart; it marked a new 
era in history; it was the application of Christian principle 
to political action. The strong were to protect and de- 
liver the weak. Every American held up his head and 
walked proudly as befitted a benefactor of mankind. 
But this pride went before a fall. War is a dangerous 
thing to play with, even altruistically. When the news of 
Dewey’s victory in Manila Bay swept over the land it car- 


ried away all the noble altruism upon which the American 
236 


THE PHILIPPINE EPISCOPATE PoBeTi 


people had prided themselves. They saw in that victory 
not another opportunity to deliver an oppressed people 
from the rule of Spain—not at all; it was America’s op- 
portunity to plant the Stars and Stripes in the East. It 
is reported that Mark Hanna cried in exultation, ‘“Where 
the American flag goes up it must never come down!” 
The American business man saw in this triumph of the 
American Navy more business; not content with the ex- 
ploitation of the American continent, he would exploit the 
islands of the Sea. And, sadder still, every Protestant 
sect saw in this naval victory an opening for the preaching 
of its peculiar type of Christian doctrine. The Philippine 
Islands were Christian and had been Christian for centu- 
ries. Devout Spanish friars had carried to them the Gos- 
pel of Jesus, and Saint Francis and for centuries the people 
had been cradled in that Gospel and they loved it: they 
sacredly kept its feasts and fasts. However they might 
deplore Spanish rule, they loved their Catholic Church and 
they love it to this day. 

Soon after the establishment of American rule over the 
Philippine Islands, the General Convention of the Protes- 
tant Episcopal Church met in the city of San Francisco 
and, looking westward, determined to have its share of the 
booty of the victory of Manila Bay. It made provision for 
the establishment of a diocese of the Protestant Episcopal 
‘Church in the Philippine Islands: at the instance of John 
Pierpont Morgan and other leaders of the Church, it chose 
my friend Charles H. Brent as bishop of that diocese. 

All along I had bitterly deplored the action of the 
United States Government in relation to the Filipinos. It 
seemed to me a reversal of the altruistic policy upon which 
the war against Spain had been waged. When that war 
against Spain for the freedom of Cuba degenerated into 
a war against the Filipinos for the conquest of their coun- 
try, my indignation waxed hot against these betrayers of 


238 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

American principles. And when a friend of mine was 
chosen to make my Church a co-partner in this act of spoli- 
ation and oppression, I could no longer hold my peace. 

Before his consecration I wrote an open letter to Bishop- 
elect Brent deploring the action of the United States gov- 
ernment in making conquest of the Philippine Islands and 
the action of the Episcopal Church in introducing to those 
islands the religious confusion of the United States. ‘This 
letter attracted wide attention and roused controversy. It 
was approved as a matter of course by Roman Catholics 
and condemned by Protestants, and it drove another nail 
into my ecclesiastical cofin. As an Episcopalian I was 
dead and ready for burial. In spite of the protest of Wil- 
liam Jennings Bryan and other true Americans, the war 
of conquest against the Filipinos went on to its ruthless 
end. ‘The power of the great Western democracy crushed 
the democratic aspirations of this nascent Eastern democ- 
racy and the shadow on the dial of human progress was 
turned ten degrees backward. 

I can never think of the betrayal and capture of Agui- 
naldo without a surge of shameful blood rushing from my 
heart to my face, and when I saw my old friend Brent 
standing upon a hill in the Philippine Islands between two 
soldiers, and this in the pages of the Spirit of Missions, 
then my heart wept bitter tears of shame and sorrow. I 
know they will tell me what America has done for the 
Filipinos in the way of sanitation, education and the like, 
yes; but the Americans have taken away from the Filipinos 
the one thing which their hearts desire; that is their lib- 
erty, their inborn right to rule themselves. 

By this action the character of the American Govern- 
ment was changed from that of a democratic to an imperial 
republic, and this evil example of imperialism followed 
fourteen years later by the German Kaiser has been the 
ruin of the world. 


CHAPTER XLII 
AN EMPTY CHURCH 


T is the custom of the Episcopal Church to have morn- 
ing and evening prayer upon every Lord’s Day. 
These two forms of worship are essentially the same 

and consist of the reading of the Scriptures, of prayers and 
hymns and a sermon by the minister. It is true, in the 
morning the celebration of the Holy Communion may fol- 
low the office of morning prayer. But only a few of the 
worshippers remain for that service, so that to all intents 
and purposes the evening service is a repetition of the 
morning. As a consequence of this, evening prayer is 
very slightly attended; it was so in St. Andrew’s Church. 
Sunday night after Sunday night I would follow my choir 
into the church; we would go through the elaborate musi- 
cal service and there would be to assist us in that office only 
two or three worshippers. “There were two who were 
faithful and could be counted on every night; these two, of 
course, were sisters, not brothers, of the church; their 
names were Mary Montgomery and Elizabeth Taylor. 
Although I was very fond of these two sisters, their pres- 
ence did not console me for the emptiness of my church. 
I looked upon the evening service as a waste of effort. 
This condition was not peculiar to St. Andrew’s Church, 
but it was common to all churches. I cast about in my 
mind to find some remedy for this evil and, after consid- 
: erable thought, in the fall of 1903 I determined to try the 
experiment of giving the people something that would at- 
tract them to the evening worship. I decided that I would 


omit evening prayer, reading that office in the afternoon, 
239 


240 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 
and would devote the evening to a series of lecture 
sermons. 

It so happened that the year 1903 was remarkable in 
the history of the Episcopal Church in America because 
of the visitation made to it by the Right Reverend the 
Archbishop of Canterbury; this was the first time that such 
an archbishop had visited the American Church and con- 
sequently it was a notable event. The archbishop was 
received with all honours; he was the guest of the Presi- 
dent of the United States and of John Pierpont Morgan, 
and other high and mighty men of the nation. Consider- 
ing the importance to religious history of the coming of 
the archbishop, and recalling to my mind that he was a 
high dignitary, not only of the Church but also of the 
State, I decided to give a course of lectures on the subject 
of ‘The Relation of the Church to the State,” giving to 
the course the general title of “Religion and Politics.” 
When I announced this course of sermon lectures, I had 
not in mind any definite outline as to what that course 
would be. My study of history had made me familiar 
with and interested in the matter and I felt that I could 
treat it in a way that would interest my people; I had not 
in mind the faintest notion that I would say anything that 
would disturb the peace of the Church. I did not even go 
so far as to lay out the course in detail; I depended upon 
one subject to suggest another. [he mere announcement 
in the church and in the daily press of this course of lec- 
tures was sufficient to attract a fair audience on the first 
night. I began the course with a lecture upon the Roman 
Empire, in which the Christian Church had its origin; the 
Roman Empire was the State with which the Church came 
into conflict as soon as it was organized. I outlined the 
history of the Roman State from its beginning down to 
the time of the entrance of Christianity into its economy. 
This lecture was followed by one on ‘The Attitude of 


AN EMPTY CHURCH 241 


Jesus to the State.” I pointed out that this attitude was 
one of bitter hostility, that while Jesus did not in direct 
terms assail the Roman power, He was in passive resist- 
ance to it from the beginning to the end of His public 
career. [he existing State was to Him the enemy of His 
God; the existing State was tyrannical, oppressing the peo- 
ple, while His conception of government was one of justice, 
wherein the weakest of the people were protected from 
the aggressions of the strong. From first to last, Jesus 
refused to recognize the jurisdiction of the State; He 
would not submit to the command of Herod, nor plead 
before Pontius Pilate. 

The next lecture in course treated of the foundation of 
the Church as a government within the territory of the 
Roman Empire. The Church, as its name implies, was 
the calling together of the people who had neither part 
nor lot in the privileges of the Roman Government; they 
were simply its subjects and its slaves, ground under the 
iron heel of its despotism. These were organized into an 
heavenly State as over against the earthly power of the 
Roman State. 

The fourth lecture described ‘Jesus’ Method of Gov- 
ernment”; in this it was shown that Jesus laid down the 
fundamental principle that physical violence was to have 
no place in the new establishment; it was to have no army, 
no navy, no courts of law, no prisons, no gallows; its gov- 
ernment was to be the government of love in which hate 
could find no place. ‘This lecture was afterward published 
separately by one of the peace societies and given a wide 
circulation. 

The fifth lecture in the course had to do with “The Im- 
perialization of the Church,” showing that the Church as 
it spread through the Roman Empire gradually moulded 
itself into a form of imperial government. As it increased 
in power and influence, its officers, the bishop and clergy, 


242 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


gradually assumed to themselves the government of the 
Church and lorded it over God’s heritage as if they were 
emperors and kings of the earth. 

The sixth lecture showed the bitter consequence of this 
assumption of power by the official organization. This 
organization, wearying of persecution, made peace with 
the Empire; Christianity was recognized as the official re- 
ligion and the bishops of the Church became the princes of 
the Empire. The consequence of this was the subjection 
of the Church to imperial rule. ‘The Emperor became the 
High Priest of the Church. Theodosius fixed the rule of 
faith, and the Church in the East became at last a mere 
adjunct to the State. 

The seventh lecture made clear the reasons for the su- 
premacy of the Church in the West. The fall of the Em- 
pire and the withdrawal of the seat of government from 
Rome to Constantinople gave to the bishops of Rome their 
opportunity, which they used to such good purpose that 
these bishops, under the title of Pope, became the supreme 
rulers of Europe for many centuries. 

The eighth lecture was concerned with the fall of the 
medieval Church, which came to ruin through the assump- 
tion on the part of the papacy of political dominion 
over all Europe, not in the interest of humanity nor to the 
glory of God, but in the interest of the papacy and to the 
glory of the Pope. ‘This lecture brought us down to 
the beginning of modern times. 

The ninth lecture spoke of the rise of national Churches 
which followed upon the fall of the Catholic Church. It 
treated of the reformation as conducted by Luther and 
made special reference to the establishment of the Church 
of England. 

This course of sermon lectures attracted wide attention; 
by the time we had reached the third in the course, the 
Church was full to its capacity; in the congregation were 


AN EMPTY CHURCH 243 
to be seen professors of the university, judges of the courts 
and people of all sorts and conditions in life. ‘The news- 
papers gave to them wide publicity, not only in Rochester, 
but in New York and elsewhere. Up to this time there 
had been no adverse criticism. The lectures were consid- 
ered from the point of view of history and they had not 
yet touched upon the history of the Church in more recent 
times, nor had they treated of its present condition. 

Nor had I in my mind any notion whatever of stirring 
up the authorities of the Church and bringing about a con- 
troversy that might end seriously for myself and for the 
Church. My method of preparing these lectures was 
hazardous in the extreme. As I have already declared, 
it has been my custom never to speak from notes, but in this 
case I made an exception to the rule; an exception, how- 
ever, which was one more of form than of principle; as 
composed, these lectures were as truly extempore as if I 
had spoken them without notes from the pulpit. What I 
did was to mull over the lecture during the week. On Sat- 
urday morning I would go to my study and break into the 
subject, writing the introduction; then I would go about 
my business and at about nine o'clock in the evening go to 
my desk again and finish the lecture. ‘This I did for the 
most part without lifting pen from paper, except to dip it 
in the ink. I would then throw the sheets aside, go home 
and go to bed. The next morning being Sunday, I would 
have my early celebration of the Holy Communion, my 
morning service, preach my sermon; in the afternoon have 
my Sunday school; then I would go to my study and arrange 
the sheets of my lecture for the evening reading. It can 
be seen how foolish this method was. I did not know 
what was in these lectures until I read them from the pul- 
pit. All went well until I came to the lectures treating of 
the Church in present times, and then I suffered the con- 
sequences of my method. 


CHAPTER XLIII 


THE AMERICAN CHURCH-STATE 


P AHE tenth lecture in this course told of the relation 
of Church and State in the United States of 
_ America. I called attention to the fact that in 
New England an effort was made to establish a Church 
which should subordinate to itself the powers of the State. 
The settlement of New England by the Puritans was re- 
ligious in its character. ‘These men and women left their 
native land, braved the ocean and the perils of the wilder- 
ness, that they might worship their God according to the 
dictates of their own conscience. ‘The leaders of this 
movement were both clergymen and laymen, but the lay- 
men were in a sense themselves clergymen. ‘The Puritans 
had the primitive conception of the Church: every member 
of the Church was a priest; his heart was his altar and his 
good deeds his sacrifices. The official priesthood was 
taken directly from the laity and assigned by the congre- 
gation to the special duty of conducting divine worship, 
but, as in the primitive Church, these officers held their 
position for life; they gradually assumed an authority over 
the people which was the consequence of their long tenure 
in office. Not only the religious but also the political life 
of the people was in the control of the clergy. 

Brooks Adams, in his history of Massachusetts, has 
given a vivid account of the consequence of this subordina- 
tion of the State of the Church. New England repeated 
the history of the Church in Europe during the domina- 


tion of priestly supremacy. ‘There was the same inquisi- 
244 — 


THE AMERICAN CHURCH-STATE 245 


tion into the private life and intellectual beliefs of the peo- 
ple; the same persecution of the heretic; the same hanging 
of witches and the attempt to arrest the progress of 
thought. The Bible, as interpreted by the clergy, was the 
rule, not only of faith, but of knowledge. This tyranny 
prevailed down to the time of the Revolution and was not 
completely overthrown until the first quarter of the nine- 
teenth century; it suffered defeat at the hands of the lead- 
ers of the Unitarian movement. Emerson and Parker, 
themselves of Puritan origin, destroyed the foundations of 
the Puritan religion. If the reader desires fuller informa- 
tion on this subject, let him by all means read Brooks 
Adams’ history of Massachusetts. This phase of the re- 
ligious life of America was not confined to Massachusetts, 
but it influenced through migration the great Northwest. 

Although we may deplore the evils of this puritanic 
conception, we cannot deny that its influence has not been 
altogether harmful. As I say in my lecture, it is easy to 
speak scoffingly of the bigotry and narrowness of the Puri- 
tan, to tell lurid stories of the whipping of heretics, the 
hanging of women, but it is not so easy to measure the 
moral value and the spiritual potency of that conception 
of the State which looks upon it as the instrument of di- 
vine justice; which teaches that officers of the State are 
the vicegerents of God. Such a conception is the only 
one that can make the State other than a merciless ma- 
chine. If the State is not divine, it is brutal. 

The Middle Atlantic States were settled largely for 
commercial reasons; it was the canny Hollander intent on 
gain that cast anchor on the shores of Manhattan Island, 
and the canny Hollander reigns there still. “The Southern 
States were settled by the younger sons of the English no- 
bility; these men left their native land that they might 
carve out for themselves great estates in the Western Con- 
tinent. They brought with them the instincts of the land- 


246 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


lord; they subjected labour to the dominion of the em- 
ployer in a more stringent manner than was possible even 
in England; they bought their labour in Africa and it was 
separated from the master class by the difference of colour. 
The Negro could never aspire to the possession of land 
nor even to the ownership of his own body; he could have 
no wife, no children. 

Naturally, the religion of this region was that of the 
domination of the Church by the State. The great land- 
lords were the patrons of the Church and the clergy were 
necessarily subservient to the landlord class. ‘The estab- 
lished Church of England became the established Church 
of these Southern Colonies. At the present time this 
relation of the Church to the State prevails throughout 
the country. [he State dominates the Church; it looks 
to the Church to sustain it by preaching the sacredness of 
the State as it now exists and so persuading the people 
that they shall not in any wise disturb the peace of the 
State. ‘The feebleness of the Church is the consequence 
of its divisions. We have now in the United States about 
thirty-five millions of enrolled Christians officered by about 
one hundred twenty thousand men; if this were a united 
Church, it would, as a matter of course, control the politi- 
cal and social life of the country as despotically as the 
Catholic Church ruled the political and social life of the 
Middle Ages. | 

But, as we are all aware, the Christian Church no longer 
exists; it is not a great planetary body controlling its own 
movements by its own inherent power; it is a shattered 
group of asteroids whirling madly in space. ‘They are 
without perceptible influence. It is because of this weak- 
ness of the religious element that we are in our present 
sad estate; that we are in the hand of the political spoiler; 
that our cities are reeking with impurity; that our politics 


THE AMERICAN CHURCH-STATE 247 


are our shame and reproach; that our society is a society 
of broken homes and childless women; that the weak are 
crying for succour, and the sinner dying for want of 
pardon. 

The eleventh lecture had for its subject “The Commer- 
cialized Church in the Commercialized State.” The week 
before the composition and delivery of this lecture, the 
Honourable James G. Cutler, then mayor of the city of 
Rochester, addressed the Protestant clergy of the city. 
In the course of that address he told us that city was subject 
to an extra political power; this power was embodied in 
a system known as the “boss system,” which system was 
maintained in the interests of the commercial element of 
the community. This commercialism dominated politics, 
and the reason of his telling this secret to the clergy was 
that he desired their assistance in the effort he was making 
to free the political government from this commercial 
domination. 

But alas, the poor clergy were under the hand of this 
same sinister influence. “The Church was even more com- 
mercialized than the State. The clergy were the hired 
men of the churches and the Protestant churches were in 
the grip of commercialism; they were supported by the 
commercial classes. The merchants were the chief ofh- 
cers of the churches, and woe betide that clergyman who 
dared to lift his voice against the system that prevailed in 
the world of business. A leading merchant told me that 
Jesus, if He were alive to-day, would teach the competi- 
tive system. If that were so, then the Jesus of to-day 
would have to contradict every word that the Jesus of 
history had spoken, for if the Jesus of history taught any- 
thing, it was the co-operative system as against the 
competitive. 

This sermon lecture on “The Commercialized Church 


248 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 

in the Commercialized State” gave great offence to the 
commercial classes. My own people were not disturbed 
by it because I had taught them these fundamental prin- 
ciples of the Christian religion, which they had gladly re- 
ceived and which they practised so far as the present state 
of the world permitted. 


CHAPTER XLIV 


A WORD THAT WENT ROUND THE WORLD 


hk evening of the eighteenth of February, 1905, 
was eventful in my own history and important to 
the history of the world. On that evening I fin- 
ished the twelfth in my series of lectures on religion and 
politics; the title of that lecture was ‘“The Present State 
of the Churches.’’ In his address to us, the mayor of 
Rochester had said that we, the clergy, could have any 
city government that we wished to have. In saying this, 
I presume the mayor looked upon the clergy as the cus- 
todians of the spiritual and moral interests of the com- 
munity, and as these interests ought to be paramount, the 
clergy, as a matter of course, should control the lower 
political and commercial interests. ‘There was a time 
when the clergy did this. Gregory the Great and Inno- 
cent III controlled the governments of Europe in the in- 
terests of the people of Europe; the Puritan clergy of 
New England dominated the political and mercantile ele- 
ments in the interests of righteousness. 

But alas, the clergy of the present day were not per- 
mitted to have any part or lot in the general affairs of 
mankind; they were expected to confine themselves strictly 
to religious matters, and the term “religion’’ was supposed 
to have reference only to the next world. It was the busi- 
ness of the clergy to preach salvation—salvation not from 
the ills afflicting mankind in this miserable world of ours, 
but a salvation from the wrath of God which was to be 
visited upon sinners in the fires of a future hell, The 

249 


250 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


clergy were debarred from the discussion of things of vital 
interest to the man of the street and the woman of the 
home. Not so long ago the clergy had been in control of 
the education of the people; they had been the presidents 
of colleges, the principals of academies, and largely the 
teaching-force of these institutions, but with the establish- 
ment of the public school system the divisions of Christen- 
dom had made it necessary to exclude the clergy from the 
teaching-ofhce of this system. ‘The public schools were 
not only non-sectarian so far as Christianity was con- 
cerned, they were open to every sect of Christians and to 
Jews, Turks, infidels and heretics. The colleges and 
private institutions had soon to follow the pattern of the 
public school and the clergy were no longer sought for 
as presidents and principals of educational institutions. 
This revolution in the educational policy of the country 
was disastrous to clerical influence. The reason for this 
was that the Church was no longer the moulding power of 
the community. 

In seeking the cause for this downfall of the Church, I 
found it in the fact that the Church was no longer in har- 
mony with its environment. ‘To-day the world was demo- 
cratic; the Church was imperial and aristocratic. ‘The 
world was scientific; the Church was dogmatic. The 
world based its knowledge on observation and experiment; 
the Church rested upon what it called a “divine revela- 
tion’ as interpreted by its own officers. The world was 
becoming increasingly socialistic, while the Church was 
based in privilege; the clergy were a privileged body in 
the Church. The bishops were a privileged class ruling 
the lower clergy. The Pope possessed the highest privi- 
lege of all: he was God on earth. 

When I sat down to write out my sermon lecture on this 
subject, ‘“The Present State of the Churches,’ I had no 
notion of how I should express my thought. I followed 


A WORD THAT WENT ROUND THE WORLD 251 


my usual habit on the Saturday morning of the eighteenth 
of February, 1905: I went to my study soon after break- 
fast and broke into the subject, writing the introduction. 
I then went about my business, and came back to my study 
after supper and sat down at my desk and completed my 
work. As I remember, I did not take my pen from my 
paper except to dip it in the ink, until the last word was 
written. ‘This intellectual edifice, which I thus built up, 
was already in my mind before I gave it outward existence. 
When it was completed, my mind was made known to my- 
self and to the world. On finishing the task, I left my 
sheets in disorder on my desk and went home and to bed, 
sleeping soundly till I was wakened by the bell for the 
morning communion. I conducted the morning prayer, 
preached my sermon, celebrated what we Catholics called 
the High Mass, had my dinner, rested for an hour, then 
went back to my study, gathered my sheets together and 
arranged them for the evening reading. I did not so 
much as look them over. When I went up into the pulpit, 
my objective mind was as ignorant of the contents of that 
sermon lecture as anyone in my audience; it was the ex- 
pression of my subjective mind. My objective mind lis- 
tened to it with great interest, but was not sufficiently alert 
to take in the full import of what I was saying. I was 
declaring that the weakness of the Church lay in the fact 
that it was living in a past that had gone for ever and was 
oblivious of the present; that it was dogmatic in a scien- 
tific world, privileged in a socialistic world, and imperialis- 
tic in a democratic world. I challenged the Church to be- 
come scientific, democratic and socialistic. In dealing with 
the scientific element, I made use of the following words: 

“In the light of scientific research, the Founder of 
Christianity, Jesus the son of Joseph, no longer stands 
apart from the common destiny of man in life and death, 
but He is in all things physical like as we are, born as we 


252 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


are born, dying as we die, and both in life and death in 
the keeping of that same Divine Power, that heavenly 
Fatherhood, which delivers us from the womb and carries 
us down to the grave. When we come to know Jesus in 
His historical relations, we see that miracle is not a help, it 
is a hindrance, to an intelligent comprehension of His per- 
son, His character and His mission. We are not alarmed, 
we are relieved when scientific history proves to us that 
the fact of His miraculous birth was unknown to Himself, 
unknown to His mother, and unknown to the whole Chris- 
tian community of the first generation.” 

After each of these lectures, Mrs. Crapsey was kind 
enough to prepare for me a supper to which she invited 
various men who were interested in this line of talk. 
Among the guests on the night of the delivery of this 
twelfth lecture in the course, were Warrant Castleman, 
Howard Mosher and Judge Sutherland of the Supreme 
Court. In the course of the conversation, Judge Suther- 
Jand said, ‘“We have just been listening to a very wonder- 
ful discourse. If any trouble comes to Dr. Crapsey be- 
cause of its delivery, we must all stand behind him.” 
This was the first intimation that had come to me that 
trouble could arise from this utterance. It was so much a 
part of my mental and spiritual equipment that I sup- 
posed it to be equally the possession of all thinking minds, 
but I had, without knowing it, taken a decided step in ad- 
vance of the general Christian thought of the time. 
Highly educated men and women, presidents of colleges, 
and the like, were still under the spell of the Christmas 
legend. They had long since applied the principles of the 
Higher Criticism to the Old Testament; had discarded the 
stories of Creation; had refused to listen to Balaam’s ass, 
nor would they credit the power of Joshua to stay the 
course of the sun, but these men had not applied this scien- 
tific principle to the first chapters of the Gospels of St. 


A WORD THAT WENT ROUND THE WORLD 253 


Matthew and St. Luke. I was the very first man in the 
English-speaking world so to apply in public the Higher 
Criticism, and I suffered the consequences of the pioneer. 

The Rochester papers had given large space to these 
sermon lectures and on the morning following its delivery 
the Democrat and Chronicle published this in full. As 
may be well believed, it caused a sensation. It was re- 
produced in whole or in part by nearly every paper in the 
United States, with editorial comment. It was tele- 
graphed almost in full to England and reproduced in the 
leading journals of Great Britain. As an evidence of the 
tremendous power of the spoken word, an echo of it came 
to me within a few months from the Qadian District, 
Gurdaspur, India, in a letter dated July 4, 1905, which 
runs as follows: 


“I have just read an extract from your lecture in which you have 
dealt upon the subject of inerrancy of the Bible and the manhood 
of Jesus, the son of Joseph, ‘born as we are born, dying as we die.’ 
I am glad to know that the churchmen in Europe and America do 
now come forward to speak their hearts with such a liberty. Have 
you got any lectures of yours published? If so, I shall be obliged 
to you if you can send me a copy of it by post. Under a separate 
cover, I send you an interesting literature and shall be glad to send 
you more on hearing from you. 

ian, 
“Yours very truly, 
“MAHAMMAD SADIG.” 


The consequence of this explosion on my part was a 
great disturbance of the theological atmosphere; it was 
followed by a terrific storm, and the storm was not long 
in coming. It began to cover the skies on the following 
day: Tuesday, the twentieth of February, 1905, dates the 
beginning of a contention that occupied the attention of 
the world for nearly two years. 


CHAPTER XLV 


NO CAUSE FOR ACTION 


HE morning papers of Tuesday, February 21st, 
1905, carried from two to three columns of com- 
ments by the various ministers of the city on my 
sermon lecture of the nineteenth. Many of these comments 
were commendatory, especially that of Dr. Nelson Millard, 
a retired Presbyterian minister, and a man of high intelli- 
gence and well esteemed by the community. The clergy 
in charge of churches were naturally very cautious, except 
those who came out in unqualified condemnation of my 
position. “The one who most severely censured me was 
the Reverend Andrew J. Graham, of Christ Church, who 
was sustained by the Reverend Louis Washburn, of St. 
Paul’s Church. ‘The bishop made an immediate demand 
upon me that I should either repudiate what had been pub- 
lished as my utterance in the daily papers, or I should 
make a formal retraction. As the bishop had no right 
whatever to make such a demand, and as compliance 
would stultify me, I naturally refused to accede to his re- 
quest. He called a meeting of the clergy of the city and 
discussed the matter with them in secret. Nothing came 
of this, as there was a very decided division among the 
clergy as to whether any action should be taken in the mat- 
ter at all. In due season, a number of the clergy signed 
a paper accusing me of teaching false doctrines. 
In accordance with the law of the Church, the bishop 
appointed a committee of five to investigate and report 
as to whether there was any cause for action on the part 


of the authorities of the diocese. ‘This committee in due 
254 


NO CAUSE FOR ACTION 255 


time invited me to meet with them and discuss the matter 
in hand. This invitation I declined and the committee 
called upon me at my house. I had with me as my assessor 
the Reverend Amos Skeele, rector of the Church of the 
Epiphany, of Rochester. Mr. Philip Mosher, the chair- 
man of the committee, said to me, ‘‘Dr. Crapsey, we know 
that different persons put different interpretations upon va- 
rious texts of Holy Scriptures; one man will give to a 
passage this meaning, and another man that. Now taking 
this fact of various interpretations into consideration, do 
you believe that the Holy Scriptures are the Word of 
God?” I answered, ‘“‘Certainly if I may, as I must, apply 
this principle of interpretation, I hold and preach that in 
the Bible is to be found divine revelation.” Mr. Mosher 
then said, “Applying this same principle of interpretation 
to the Creed, do you hold that the Apostles’ Creed is the 
true Creed of the Church and contains the essentials of 
salvation?’ ‘To this I again responded, ‘‘Certainly, if we 
may, as we must, interpret the Apostles’ Creed in the light 
of history, I hold and teach that it declares the true faith, 
and liso preach,’ 

When these questions and answers had duly passed be- 
tween us, Mr. Mosher and the other members of the com- 
mittee declared themselves satisfied with my orthodoxy. 
We then ceased to be a court and a defendant, and became 
at once simply friends again. We spent an hour or two 
in converse. If I remember correctly, Mrs. Crapsey 
served refreshments and the committee went their way; 
and Dr. Skeele said to me with great satisfaction, ‘“There 
will be no trial.” In a very few days I had a letter from 
Mr. Mosher telling me that the committee was entirely 
satisfied with my statement and wished to embody it in 
their report to the bishop, asking my permission to do so. 
I answered that I would grant that permission if the ques- 
tions and answers were given as we had stated them to 


266 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


each other in our conference. Mr. Mosher consented to 
this and invited me to come up to Niagara Falls that we 
might properly prepare the paper. I accepted his invita- 
tion and we together prepared a document for submission 
to the bishop which, if it had been submitted as prepared, 
would not only have made impossible my trial, but any 
trial for heresy in the future. What we did was by a 
series of questions and answers to grant the principle of 
interpretation, both in relation to the Creed and the Holy 
Scriptures. If this had been submitted to the bishop and 
at the same time published to the world, it would have 
been impossible for the bishop to have rejected it, because 
the whole world would at once have approved of this solu- 
tion of the diffculty and both the clergy and the laity 
would have been released from slavish obedience to the 
letter of both Creed and Scripture. 

But it was not so submitted. The bishop interfered 
with the free action of the committee; the majority of the 
committee refused to present me for trial, but instead of 
giving that clear-cut reason for it, they fumbled the whole 
matter, tried and condemned me themselves, not for being 
a heretic, but for being a fool. ‘They claimed that I did 
not know what I was talking about and, therefore, was 
not to be held responsible. ‘They said, among other 
things, that I preached eloquently that which for the time 
being I believed to be true, but they declared that there 
was not sufficient evidence in either my sermons or other 
writings to warrant a presentation. Three of the com- 
mittee signed the majority report, and two the minority 
report, which affirmed that there was sufficient cause for 
my trial to be found in my utterances. This ought to have 
settled the matter and, in the judgment of the world, it 
did put an end to any legal action, so that I was still a 
minister in good standing in my Church. But while le- 
gally this brought to a close the controversy, that contro- 


NO CAUSE FOR ACTION 257 


versy still went on in the Church and secular press. I was 
assailed as a man false to my position by many of the 
clergy. One of these was the Reverend Dr. Edward Ab- 
bott, who accused me of being a traitor to the cause that I 
had sworn to support. I replied to Dr. Abbott and this 
contention between us was very ably summed up in the 
Pacific Churchman of October 15th, 1905, under the head- 
ing, “Honour among Clergymen”’: 


“What is a clergyman to do who finds as the years go on that 
his belief has changed greatly from that of his earlier years, and dif- 
fers widely from that which is commonly held in the Church? Dr. 
A. S. Crapsey has recently discussed the question in the Outlook, 
and has replied to a letter of criticism by Dr. Edward Abbott. The 
Outlook has commented editorially upon the positions of the two 
writers and thrown the question out for general consideration. 

“Dr. Crapsey’s position is essentially this: "That the Church 
stands for the fundamental verities of Christ’s teaching, which he 
defines, somewhat strangely, as the summary of the Law, the Lord’s 
Prayer, and the five Laws of Righteousness of the Sermon on the 
Mount; that for the man who holds these verities, but has other- 
wise greatly departed from the current belief of the Church, there 
are only three possible lines of action—stultification, silence, or 
frank statement of his position, and a clinging to his office in the 
Church. ‘The fourth possibility, that of leaving the Church, he 
declines to entertain. ‘The only reasonable and Christian course is 
the third. ‘A clergyman belongs to his Church; it is his spiritual 
city. ‘By withdrawing from his place he loses his power.’ It is, 
of course, upon the question of withdrawing that the controversy 
hinges. Dr. Abbott meets these points by an insistence in the form 
of questions addressed to Dr. Crapsey, upon the language of the 
formularies and the ordinal of the Church. He is a strict con- 
structionist. “The Outlook sums up with a criticism of Dr. Crap- 
sey’s definition of the fundamental verities, but a general sympathy 
with his point of view.” 


The Pacific Churchman goes on to apply the principle 
of interpretation to the creeds. It declares the impossi- 


258 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


bility of believing the creeds in their original sense. ‘The 
creeds were formulated in the pre-scientific age of the 
world. Men then believed in the three-compartment uni- 
verse: heaven, earth and hell; and the creed is governed 
by that conception. Jesus lived on earth, descended into 
hell and ascended into heaven. ‘That conception is no 
longer possible to an intelligent man. The descent into 
hell and the ascent into heaven must either be discarded or 
interpreted. Paul interpreted the ascension as a passing 
from the lower life of the flesh to the higher life of the 
spirit. The conclusion of the Pacific Churchman is that 
I was entirely right in my contention and ought not to be 
placed on trial. 

During that summer I published through the house of 
Whittaker, in New York, my lectures in full, under the 
title of “Religion and Politics.” This book commanded 
wide attention and, for the most part, favourable notice. 
The Pacific Churchman in the same issue of October 15th 
reviewed this book, saying: 


“However widely we may differ from some of the positions laid 
down in this very able book, it is infinitely refreshing to find a man 
who has the tempered courage of deep convictions on vital questions 
touching very nearly the interests of the whole State, as well as the 
interests of the Church. We distinctly disagree with him on more 
than one point, notably on his views of the genesis of the Church. But 
he says so much, and says it so well, on purity, cleanliness, in all things 
affecting the corporate life of the community of the States, as well as 
the corporate life of the Church, that one can at least pass over for 
the time what, from our point of view, we take to be radical errors. 

“There is a very able, terse summary of the growth of the 
Roman State, and its prevailing conditions when our Lord came, 
and the Church began her work. ‘Then he traces the relations of 
Religion and Politics down to these days, necessarily in very ab- 
breviated terms, still with much lucidity, and in a way that holds 
attention. And at the close of the book, in sharp-pointed words, 
whose keen edge is not blunted by the slightest hesitating regard for 


NO CAUSE FOR ACTION 259 


any one’s susceptibilities, he arraigns the corrupt and shameless con- 
ditions of American life as a whole. For instance, ‘We have vast, 
fabulous wealth at one end of the social scale, and bare subsistence 
at the other. The forms of law are used to divert the earnings of 
the industrious into the purse of the dishonest and of the idle. 
Widows and orphans are beguiled into buying undigested securi- 
ties, which prove to be indigestible, and which rob the widows and 
fatherless of their all. To correct these abuses, and to call the na- 
tion back to its high and holy calling as a Church-State, whose duty 
it is to promote the general welfare, to secure domestic tranquillity, 
and, above and before all, to establish justice, is the task to which 
the American people must set itself without delay.’ And there are 
plainer words still, and wholesome ones, for the individual: ‘If the 
primary of your heart be clean, then you can think of cleansing the 
City, the State, the Nation. Go to the primary of your home and 
bring up your children in the belief that man is more than money, 
and that property rights are always to be subject to personal rights. 
Then go to the primary of your ward, insist that the meeting shall 
be open and free, speak for order and decency and open discussion, 
demand of your alderman the same unblemished personal char- 
acter you would demand of your minister, let the man you send to 
a convention represent you, and not some outside sinister influence, 
make your primaries political schools for the discussion of National 
and State politics.’ ”’ 


This book was immediately placed on the Index by both 
Protestant and Catholic Churches. Pressure was brought 
to bear upon the house of Whittaker, and by them, so far 
as possible, it was withdrawn from the market. I offered 
it to the Baker-Taylor Company, and they refused to han- 
dle it. It has been in demand from that day to this; the 
original edition has been exhausted and I can no longer 
supply the demand. It is my purpose to reissue the work, 
if possible, in the near future. I have not one word of it 
to retract; it is, of course, an inadequate treatment of the 
subject but, so far as it goes, it was true sixteen years ago 
and it is true to-day. 


CHAPTER XLVI 
GUILTY AS CHARGED 


N Wednesday, the eighteenth day of April, in the 
year 1906, accompanied by my daughter Adelaide 


and the Honourable James Breck Perkins, my 
senior counsel, I left my home in Rochester and entrained 
for the town of Batavia where I was to undergo a trial 
for the crime of heresy. This was a crime not known to 
the law of the land: it was peculiar to the Church of 
Christ. Ignoring the action of the Special Committee the 
Standing Committee of the Diocese had indicted me for 
heresy. : 
After the establishment of Christianity as the religion 
of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Theodosius made any 
departure from the settled creed a crime against the State. 
From that time down to the year 1906, heresy trials have 
been a part of the history of Christendom. In the earlier 
period of Christianity, down through the Middle Ages, 
and even into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a 
heresy trial was a serious matter for the heretic. His 
trial meant his condemnation, and his condemnation a 
cruel death. In these, our days, heresy trials are matters 
of news, excite the attention of the public while they are in 
progress, and generally change the ecclesiastical standing 
of the heretic. Heresy is no longer a crime against the 
State. The Church has no power to visit physical punish- 
ment upon its criminals; it can only exclude them from its 
communion. 


If I had declined to attend upon the sessions of this 
260 


GUILTY AS CHARGED 261 


court, no power could have compelled me to do so. I was 
constrained to this action only by my own desire to submit 
the question at issue between myself and my accusers to 
the decision of the organization of which I was a member. 
There was no excitement attending the opening of this 
court, the sessions of which were to attract such wide at- 
tention and to be productive of such far-reaching results. 

When Mr. Perkins, my daughter and I alighted from 
the train at Batavia, we encountered the quiet of a country 
town. No one was there to greet us, nor did we attract 
attention as we walked from the station to the parish 
house of Saint James’ Church. The room in which the 
court was to sit was described by a reporter for the press 
in these words: ‘The sitting of an ecclesiastical court 
might by a lay person be supposed to be an occasion of 
much ceremonial dignity. But it was not. The court- 
room itself was the downstairs front room of the parish- 
house hall, formerly an old-fashioned double parlour from 
which the partitions had been torn away. ‘The walls were 
dull, the floor was bare and gave proof of long use. 
There was a low railing separating the room in half. As 
one entered there were perhaps twenty chairs to the right 
of the doorway for the use of others than those connected 
with the court who might wish to witness the proceedings; 
chairs set close together until the occupants more than 
rubbed elbows were provided for the press. The table 
was covered with clean cardboard. Beyond the railing, 
which enclosed about a third of the room, was space for 
the court. There were two tables behind the railing, over 
which a green cloth had been thrown for the use of the 
five members of the court; the other with slits through 
which a man’s hand could pass was the table for the coun- 
sel, at which sat Dr. Crapsey with his counsel, the Honour- 
able James Breck Perkins. Ranged against the side of 
the wall was the prosecutor, John Lord O’Brian, of Buf- 


262 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


falo, with his assistants, the Honourable John H. Stiness, 
of Providence, Rhode Island, and Dr. Francis J. Hall, 
Professor of Dogmatic Theology in the Newton Theologi- 
cal Seminary, Ecclesiastical Counsel for the Standing 
Committee, the accusers in the case.’’ Such were the hum- 
ble settings of the opening of the last heresy trial that will 
ever be held in the history of the world. 

After courteous greetings had passed between the prose- 
cution and the defence, the company sat in silence await- 
ing the entrance of the court; this court had been consti- 
tuted for the occasion. The diocese, as the unit of or- 
ganization of the Episcopal Church, has its judicial system 
for the discipline of its clergy. The modern Church, 
Catholic or Protestant, does not discipline its laity. The 
court in each diocese usually consists of five clergymen 
elected for one year by the annual convention of such 
diocese. In this particular court there was at the time 
of the opening of the trial one vacancy to which the bishop, 
by right of his office, had the appointment. On the orig- 
inal court were two clergymen of high standing, Dr. 
Hayes, of the Delancy Divinity School, and Dr. Sills, 
rector of Trinity Church, Geneva. ‘These two gentlemen 
had openly and frequently condemned me and my position 
in the pulpit and in the press and they were naturally chal- 
lenged by my counsel. ‘This left two additional vacancies 
to be filled by the bishop, who was my chief accuser. A 
court so constituted made a fair trial impossible. The 
court, as finally organized, consisted of Walter C. Roberts, 
of Corning; Charles H. Boynton, of Geneseo; Francis H. 
Dunham, of Albion; G. Sherman Burrows, of Tonawanda, 
and John M. Gilbert, of Phelps. None of these gentle- 
men had had any judicial experience; they were country 
clergymen, far removed from the influences that were dis- 
turbing the intellectual life of the Church in the greater 
centres. When the trial opened and Mr. John Lord 


GUILTY AS CHARGED 263 


O’Brian moved the trial of the defendant on the indict- 
ment, the president of the court gazed round the audience 
and asked, ‘Does anyone second the motion?” There 
was a titter in the courtroom and Mr. O’Brian had to ex- 
plain to the president that no second was necessary. Mr. 
James Breck Perkins, counsel for the accused, moved an 
adjournment on the plea that neither himself nor his as- 
sociate counsel, Mr. Edward M. Shepard, had had time to 
prepare the case. This motion was peremptorily denied. 
Whereupon Mr. Perkins said he would take his client out 
of the court. Upon this action, the court grudgingly 
granted a week’s delay. 

When the court reassembled, after the adjournment, it 
was, by the courtesy of Judge Sanford North, the assessor 
of the court, permitted to hold its sessions in the county 
courthouse. ‘This was a very dignified building and the 
courtroom was spacious enough partly to accommodate 
those who sought admittance to the trial room. During 
the time of this trial, the town of Batavia was crowded 
with visitors. Clergymen and laymen came from all parts 
of the country to be present at what was considered to be 
the most important event in the history of religion in the 
past twenty years; an event that would influence the his- 
tory of religion for all time to come. The city of Boston 
sent two large delegations, the High-Churchmen under the 
leadership of Dr. Van Alan, of the Church of the Advent; 
the Broad Church contingent was under the command of 
Dr. Elwood Worcester, of Emmanuel Church; these two 
delegations sat opposite each other and glared their 
mutual hostility. I, myself, was simply a looker-on in this 
‘Vienna’; never in my life had I such a feeling of detach- 
ment as possessed me throughout this trial. The trial was 
opened by the reading of the indictment and the plea of 
the defendant. This, however, occurred at the first ses- 
sion of the court in the parish house. The reopening of 


204. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the trial in the courtroom was made by the leader of the 
Buffalo bar, whose name I have unfortunately forgotten, a 
venerable man and a Presbyterian, who stood beside me, 
laid his hand on my head, and said, “All we hear of this 
defendant is most lovely and Christlike, but that makes his 
crime all the greater. He, an officer of his Church, in 
his official capacity, denies the fundamental doctrines of his 
Church; in his pulpit he denies the Creed. For this of- 
fence, we demand from this court a verdict of guilty with 
the consequences that follow.” With this opening, the 
court proceeded with the case; it offered in evidence my 
sermon, my book, ‘Religion and Politics,” and it called as 
a witness my assistant, Mr. Alexander, who testified that 
on a given evening I had said that Jesus was born of 
middle-class parentage and that the doctrine of the later 
Church, which removed Him from the sphere of humanity 
by denying His natural birth, was the great disaster of 
Christendom. My counsel, Mr. Perkins, put this witness 
through a severe cross-examination, in which it was 
brought out that Mr. Alexander had applied to the vestry 
for the rectorship of St. Andrew’s Church in case of my 
conviction. 

The next day was the great day of the trial. It was 
the day when the counsel met and battled with each other 
in the theological field of contest. Mr. Shepard, my 
junior counsel, was one of the leaders of the bar in the 
United States; Mr. Perkins, my senior counsel, was the 
Representative of the city of Rochester in the Congress of 
the United States; he was not only a lawyer of high repute, 
but an author of wide reputation. On the other side was 
Mr. John Lord O'Brian, one of the leaders of the Buf- 
falo bar; Judge Stiness, of Providence, Rhode Island. 
Besides this legal counsel, each side was supported by 
theological counsel. Dr. Francis Hall, of the Chicago 
Theological Seminary, argued the theological question for 


GUILTY AS CHARGED 205 


the prosecution; the defence was represented by Drs. EI- 
wood Worcester and Samuel McComb, of Emmanuel 
Church, Boston. 

The argument was opened by the senior counsel for the 
prosecution, whose contention was that every clergyman 
of the Church was bound to teach the Creed in the same 
sense that had been placed upon it by the Church from 
the beginning; in other words, every clergyman must live 
in the three-compartment universe; he must believe in the 
heaven, the earth and the hell of the primitive age. He 
was bound by the action of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church as it expressed its doctrine in its first convention in 
this country. Mr. O’Brian argued his side very ably. 
He was followed by Mr. Perkins for the defence. Mr. 
Perkins argued eloquently for the principle of interpreta- 
tion, showing that it was utterly impossible for the modern 
mind to express its religious belief in the conceptions of 
the fourth century. During the progress of the trial, 
there were various arguments on questions of the admis- 
sion of evidence; one of these was made by Mr. Shepard 
and brought out an amusing instance of the ignorance of 
the layman in matters of Church doctrine and history. 
The name of Athanasius was cited and Mr. Shepard pre- 
sumed that Athanasius was the author of the Creed that 
goes by his name, and he exclaimed dramatically, ““Who is 
Athanasius, that we should submit our intelligence to his?” 
This called forth a laugh among the clergy, and Mr. 
O’Brian politely informed Mr. Shepard that Athanasius 
was not the author of that Creed, but some unknown monk 
in the Middle Ages. At this Mr. Shepard recovered him- 
self and said, ‘“Then who is this unknown monk who is to 
fix for us our belief for all times?” 

The legal argument was followed by the theological. 
Dr. Hall spoke for the prosecution; this gentleman was 
very learned and very deaf; he opened his plea by giving 


266 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


to the court the history of the English Privy Council; his 
intention being to show that that council had no authority 
in the determination of Church doctrines. He wandered 
on and on and on until he utterly lost the court and the 
audience. I, myself, went to sleep and my daughter 
Adelaide, who was in great distress lest I should disturb 
the court, asked one of the reporters to waken me, which 
he did to the amusement of the spectators. The weary 
court became restless and another amusing incident oc- 
curred. Mr. Boynton, one of the judges, interrupted 
the proceedings and addressed Judge Roberts, saying, 
‘Judge North wishes very much to hear Mr. Shepard.” 
At this there was a ‘‘sh—sh—sh”’ on the part of the au- 
dience in general. Poor Dr. Hall, not knowing what was 
happening, stopped and stammered and Judge North arose 
and disclaimed any wish on his part to interrupt the 
learned argument of the counsel. Dr. Hall did at last 
conclude and he left the court and the audience in a state 
of utter confusion. No one knew nor cared what the 
jurisdiction of the English Privy Council might be. 

Mr. Shepard followed Dr. Hall in a convincing argu- 
ment for comprehension. He showed the utter impossi- 
bility of holding a growing body in the swathing-bands of 
its infancy; he spoke for about an hour and electrified his 
audience. Dr. Worcester then made the strong argument 
for the defence, agreeing in substance with Mr. Shepard 
and fortifying his position by his great learning; he 
showed how the creeds had changed from time to time in 
interpretation and how they must change. In the course 
of his argument, making a plea on behalf of the defendant 
on the ground of good character, he told the story of the 
overcoat as it is related in an earlier part of this history. 
I had never heard this story until then and I smiled with 
incredulity. In my heart I accused my reverend counsel 
of playing to the gallery. Dr. Worcester was followed 


GUILTY AS CHARGED 267 


in his argument by his colleague, Dr. Samuel McComb, 
who, being an Irishman, was the comedian of the occasion. 
On occasion he cried, ‘If it plase the court, we are in the 
prisence of three alternatives.’’ At this someone in the 
courtroom cried, “‘He’s an Irishman!” and the heavy 
atmosphere of the courtroom was refreshed by a gale of 
laughter. 

At one period in these proceedings, I myself made a 
statement of my position to the court, in which I explained 
and maintained the principle of interpretation, showing 
how utterly impossible it was for any sane intelligence to 
hold the creeds literally at the present time and under pres- 
ent conditions of thought. This statement was published 
in full in the Democrat and Chronicle of the next morning, 
and I sent a copy of this declaration together with the re- 
port of the argument of Mr. Shepard to Andrew D. 
White, at Cornell University. Upon these documents I 
received from Dr. White the following comment: 


“My pEAR Doctor CRAPSEY: 


“T gave last evening until midnight to Mr. Shepard’s argument 
and the accompanying documents, especially your own statement 
before the Church Court, and I have rarely been as much moved by 
any reading whatever. 

“The whole statement of facts, the argument, and your own state- 
ment have put the whole question on a higher plane than any upon 
which it has been presented to the world hitherto. It is all most 
nobly done and it has aroused my most enthusiastic admiration. I 
cannot believe it possible that it will not end the whole matter fa- 
vourably to yourself and to the large body of men whose thoughts 
take the same direction as your own. ‘To disregard the considera- 
tions presented by yourself, by Mr. Shepard, and by Professor Nash, 
would be almost a crime against humanity. It would certainly in- 
flict a blow upon the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United 
States from which it would, probably, never recover.” 


The trial court had this case under consideration for a 


268 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


week; its sessions were in secret, but the proceedings of 
the court leaked out and the reporters of the newspapers 
were able to anticipate their decision. It was reported 
that the court was standing four to one for conviction. 
Francis H. Dunham, of Albion, was the dissenting judge. 
Mr. Dunham was my sponsor in baptism; he was the as- 
sistant minister of Christ Church, New York, at the time 
of my baptism and had a natural prejudice in favour of 
his spiritual child. He contended that while I might be 
judged as having denied the deity of Jesus, I did not deny 
His divinity, and he argued that there might be a distinc- 
tion between deity and divinity, that the deity might be 
confined to the Father while the divinity was ascribed to 
the three persons of the Godhead. The reporters were 
able to say that this argument of Mr. Dunham, who was 
the oldest member of the Church, was answered by Mr. 
Gilbert, the youngest member of the court. Looking out 
of the window, Mr. Gilbert pointed and said, “There is no 
more divinity in Crapsey’s Christ than there is in that 
telegraph pole”; and with Mr. Gilbert the majority of the 
court agreed. ‘This court was organized to convict and 
it convicted. 


CHAPTER XLVII 
THE CHURCH SHUTS THE DOOR 


HE decision of the Batavian court was not final. 

An appeal lay to a Court of Review which had 

been constituted for the purpose of correcting 
the legal errors that might be made in diocesan courts. 
The lower court consisted entirely of clergymen, and 
clergymen know nothing of the technicalities of the law. 
Prior to the establishment of the Court of Review, each 
diocese was a law unto itself and the bishop was its ab- 
solute ruler; it was to remedy, in a measure, this state of 
affairs that the Court of Review was set up. ‘This court, 
however, was limited as to its jurisdiction; it could take 
knowledge only of purely legal errors; it could not discuss 
nor decide any questions relating to faith, discipline or 
worship. [hese questions were reserved to a Court of 
Appeal which was to be set up whenever the Church in 
general convention should act. 

My counsel, notwithstanding this limitation, decided to 
appeal from the Batavian court to the Court of Review 
and the appeal was filed in due time with the president of 
that court, the Right Reverend John Scarborough, Bishop 
of New Jersey. This court assembled for the purpose of 
hearing this appeal on September 4th in the parish house 
of the diocese of New York. ‘The court consisted of the 
president, Dr. William R. Huntington, Rector of Grace 
Church, New York, Reverend Alfred B. Baker D.D., Rec- 
tor of Trinity Church, Princeton, New Jersey, The Very 


Reverend John Robert Moses, M.A., Dean of the Cathe- 
269 


270 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


dral of the Incarnation, Garden City, Long Island, The 
Honorable Charles Andrews, lately Chief Judge of the 
Court of Appeals of the State of New York, The Honor- 
able Frederick Adams, Judge of the Circuit Court of New 
Jersey, The Honorable James Parker of Perth Amboy, 
New Jersey. The room in which this court assembled was 
one befitting the occasion. ‘The building was Gothic in its 
architecture; this room was spacious, lofty and lighted with 
windows of coloured glass. When the court entered this 
room and took their seats, it had all the appearance of a 
courtroom. ‘There was no gathering of curiosity-seekers; 
the only persons present were those who were there to par- 
ticipate in the proceedings. ‘The press was represented by 
reporters, the appellant was there with his son and two 
daughters, and a few of the clergy came to listen to the 
proceedings. 

Bishop Scarborough opened the court with an address 
upon the importance and solemnity of the occasion. He 
assured those present, and through them the world at 
large, that the court was deeply impressed with the impor- 
tance of the duty that had been laid upon them; their de- 
cision would affect not only the appellant, but it would 
have serious bearing upon every clergyman in the Church 
and would affect the future history of the Church itself. 
At the conclusion of the bishop’s remarks, Mr. O’Brian, 
counsel for the respondent, moved the dismissal of the ap- 
peal; the court took this motion under advisement. The 
Honourable James Breck Perkins then argued the case for 
the appellant, dwelling mainly upon the technicalities. 
His argument occupied the time of the court until the noon 
recess. When the court reassembled, Mr. Shepard ad- 
dressed the court, taking up the argument where Mr. 
Perkins had left off. It was conceded by all that the ar- 
gument of Mr. Shepard was powerful and brilliant. Mr. 
Shepard, after dismissing the merely technical errors of 


THE CHURCH SHUTS THE DOOR ag 


the lower court, entered upon a discussion of the principle 
of interpretation as applying not only to the creeds of the 
Church, but to all historical documents; as, for instance, 
to the Constitution of the United States. In the interim 
between the first and second trials, Mr. Shepard had given 
careful study to the history of the creeds of the Christian 
Church and their interpretations, and especially to the de- 
cisions of English courts bearing upon the subject. He 
spoke for nearly three hours and when he concluded he 
was congratulated most warmly by Judge Andrews and 
other members of the court; he published this argument in 
pamphlet form. Had Mr. Shepard delivered such an ora- 
tion before an English court or any other audience capable 
of comprehending and appreciating his matter, he would 
have ranked with Edmund Burke as a master of the art of 
reasoning and of the use of the English language. I pos- 
sess a copy of this pamphlet and am sorry that it is not in 
every law library in the country. Mr. O'Brian followed 
Mr. Shepard’s argument and confined himself to the tech- 
nicalities, as in the lower court he laid down the principle 
that the clergy of the Episcopal Church had no right to any 
liberty of interpretation in regard to the creeds. ‘They 
must take them in the sense in which they had been held 
by the convention that organized the Episcopal Church 
in America just after the Revolution. His argument was 
about this: if a man is a member of a club or association 
and sees defects in its constitution and by-laws, he must 
not disturb the peace of the club by moving any amend- 
ments within the club itself, but go out on the sidewalk and 
throw stones through the club windows. The principle 
advocated by Mr. O’Brian would render impossible the ad- 
ministration of any law; no law can be so made as to cover 
particular cases; hence it is that we have courts to inter- 
pret the laws. ‘This principle applies to creeds established 
by Churches as well as to laws enacted by legislatures. A 


272 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


creed is necessarily limited as to time. What men be- 
lieve at one period they cannot believe at another. As 
Dr. Rainsford said, “Creeds are opinions, and opinions 
change.” Not a judge upon the bench of that court, not 
a lawyer pleading before that bench, did or could hold the 
Christian creeds as they were held by the primitive Chris- 
tian any more than he could profess the astronomy of 
Ptolemy. At the conclusion of Mr. O’Brian’s argument, 
the court took the case under advisement, but it was plain 
to me that they had already decided. I heard Judge 
Adams remark that ‘‘We cannot permit a clergyman to 
use the pulpit of the church to defame the Creed of the 
Church,” and this was before Judge Adams had heard the 
argument of Mr. Shepard. The court rendered its de- 
cision within ten days and it simply confirmed the action 
of the court in Batavia. 

That this judgment of the court was powerless to arrest 
the progress of thought is evident from this letter which 
I received immediately after the adjournment of the court 
and while it had the matter still under advisement: 


‘Union THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
“Tuesday, 20 November, 1906. 
“Rey. ALGERNON S. Crapsgey, D.D., 
“Rochester, N. Y. 
“DEAR Dr. CRapSEY: 

“We should be false to our highest ideals if we failed to show 
you the hearty sympathy with which we have watched you fight 
your good fight. We sympathize with you because you exalt truth 
above ecclesiastical authority. We admire you because you dare to 
express unequivocally the truth you exalt. We see in you a spirit 
quite akin to Jesus of Nazareth, who dared to differ with the tra- 
ditional religious dogmas of the Jews. We theological students of 
several denominations wish you to know our sympathy and ad- 
miration. 

“FRANK DIEHL. “JoHn P. HeErRING. 
“Cart F. Crue. “RAYMAN Forest FRITz. 


THE CHURCH SHUTS THE DOOR 273 


“CuHas. H. Fisuer. “S. M. Omikura. 
“Jas. G. Barey. “E. F. HorrMire. 
“A. S. BEALE. “Puitie L. SCHENK. 
“Beny. W. Rosinson. “D. Roy FREEMAN.” 


“ALFRED J. WILSON. 


I trust that the publication of this letter, which was not 
written in confidence, will not at this late day bring trouble 
to any of the signers. I publish it in order that my read- 
ers may see how entirely the decision of the court in my 
case was made in ignorance of the living thought of -the 
Christian Church in all its branches. The Church itself 
had no Court of Appeal to consider the great principles 
at stake in this case. It hoped in this way to prevent 
changes in religious belief. ‘That it failed in this purpose 
is clearly seen from the above letter. I do not know to 
what denominations these gentlemen belong, but I had hun- 
dreds of letters of similar import from the clergy of the 
Episcopal Church. 

The Court of Review rendered its decision and served 
it upon me by the hand of the clerk of the court, the 
Reverend Dr. Anstice. When I took it from his hand, I 
was then, so far as the courts could determine, suspended 
from the performance of the spiritual ministrations in my 
parish. I could not celebrate before my altar, nor preach 
from my pulpit. It did not deprive me of my rectorship. 
I could have devolved upon an assistant the spiritual duties 
and still administer the temporalities of the parish and vis- 
ited my people, but such action on my part was impossible. 
The action of the court was in effect my dismissal from 
the ministry of the Church. I so understood it. Imme- 
diately after the departure of Dr. Anstice from the rec- 
tory, | went into my church, walked up and down the aisle 
mourning the death of my ministerial life. My wife came 
in and kissed me. I knew and she knew that the end had 
come to our mutual work in that church, a work that had 


27 4. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


occupied our lives for twenty-seven years, in which we had 
won the love of our people. My wife was not responsible 
for my crime but she suffered its consequences. 


When the decision of the Court of Review was made 
public, Life, in that week’s issue, had a wonderful car- 
toon; it pictured a bishop shutting the door of a great 
Church out of which had gone the figure of a man stripped 
of his clothing; this man was walking into the light. The 
bishop was shutting the light out of the Church and enclos- 
ing the darkness. This was the effect of the decision of 
the Court of Review. So far as that decision was con- 
cerned, the door of the Church was closed against modern 
thought. ‘Those within the Church were deprived of the 
growing light of the coming day. The effect of that de- 
cision was to drive away from the ministry of the Church 
all forward-looking men. No one can help remarking the 
difference between the clergy of the present and the clergy 
of the past. There are still in the Church able men who 
are holding over; they were in the Church at the time of 
that decision and, acting upon my advice, they remained in 
the Church. Men such as Dr. Mellish and Dr. Bartlett 
still keep the fine tradition; but the Church has not to-day, 
and it will never have again, such men as Phillips Brooks | 
and Morgan Dix. This decision inflicted, as Andrew D. 
White said it would, a permanent injury upon the Epis- 
copal Church, from which it can never recover. 


CHAPTER XLVIII 
RENUNCIATION 


MMEDIATELY after the decision of the Court of Re- 
| view, I went to New York to consult with Mr. Shep- 
ard; not that I was in doubt as to what I should do; it 
was clear to me that I must renounce the ministry of my 
church; but all the more I wanted Mr. Shepard’s advice. 
When I sat down to write my letter of renunciation to 
the bishop, I was in a state of mind that made this writing 
a difficult task. After many failures, I gave myself up to 
the spirit of wisdom, and the spirit of wisdom, not I, 
guided my pen. 

When I had finished my letter, of which I did not change 
a word, I went from my hotel down to Mr. Shepard’s of- 
fice at Broadway and Pine Street and submitted it to him. 
While he was reading I was looking out of the window 
down into Trinity Churchyard. After Mr. Shepard had 
ceased to turn the pages of my letter, I was conscious of a 
silence that filled the room. I turned and saw that the 
eyes of Mr. Shepard were moist with tears. He said, 
“Mr. Crapsey, it is worth all the pain and sorrow of the 
trial to give this letter to the world.’”’ We sent for Mr. 
Peabody, and we went over the letter with meticulous care 
and we added only one word. 

Had I expressed the surface thoughts of my own mind, 
this letter would have been mad folly; but as I went be- 
yond my own mind into the mind of the spirit of wisdom, 
I gave to the world what the Rochester Evening Post 


called a spiritual classic. This letter is as follows: 
275 


276 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


“St. ANDREW’s REcTorRY, 
“ROCHESTER, 
“November 26, 1906. 
“My pEAR BIsHoP: 

“Under existing conditions I deem it my duty to make a formal 
and final renunciation of the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal 
Church, and in consequence I ask that you will, for reasons as to 
time already given, not earlier than the third, not later than the 
sixth of December, take order under Canon 31 of the General 
Canons of the Church to accomplish my deposition from the 
Priesthood. | 

“T am certain that you will be glad to acknowledge that I am not 
compelled to this action by anything that reflects upon my moral 
integrity or calls in question my faithfulness as a pastor. My sole 
difficulty lies in the fact that a long, careful, conscientious study of 
the Holy Scriptures has compelled me to come to certain conclu- 
sions concerning the prenatal history of Jesus which are not in 
physical accord with the letter of the Creeds, and hence have com- 
pelled me in order to hold the Creeds to give to certain articles an 
interpretation that will harmonize them with the truth as I find 
that truth in the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. But recent ju- 
dicial decisions have declared that any such harmonizing of the 
Creed with my own convictions of the truth is not permissible in 
the Protestant Episcopal Church. In my own case I recognize the 
right of the constituted authorities of the Church to define the limits 
of interpretation and in order to hold fast to the truth must let go 
of the Creed as now interpreted by the Courts. I am not now and 
never have been conscious of any insincerity in giving such inter- 
pretation to the various articles of the Creed as are demanded by 
present conditions of thought and the present state of knowledge, 
any more than I am conscious of insincerity when I say the sun rises 
and sets, though as a matter of fact the sun does nothing of the kind. 
If I am to hold the Creed at all I must give to certain, if not all, 
of its articles a spiritual rather than a literally physical interpreta- 
tion. When I say of Jesus that He ascended into heaven I do not 
mean and cannot mean that with His physical body of flesh, blood 
and bones He floated into space and has for two thousand years 
been existing, somewhere in the sky, in that very physical body of 


RENUNCIATION 379 


flesh, blood and bones. Such an existence would seem to me not 
glorious but horrible, and such a conception is to me not only un- 
believable, it is unthinkable. What I do mean by this phrase is 
that Jesus, having accomplished His work in the flesh, ascended 
into the higher life of the spirit. Also when I say of Jesus that 
He was conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, I 
do not mean that the great and living God in order to get into His 
world had to violate His wonderful law of human generation, 
break into the sanctities of marriage and cause a Son of Man to be 
born without a human father. Such a notion is most repugnant to 
my ideal of a wise and holy God. I was not therefore alarmed, 
I was relieved when a careful study of the Holy Scriptures con- 
vinced me that this notion of the origin of Jesus was without foun- 
dation in history. Jesus was not lessened in my worship. He was 
ennobled by this discovery. When I reached the conclusion, as I 
did some years ago, that the infancy stories were not historical, I 
did not cease to believe in Jesus. I believed in Him all the more, 
and I gave to the words ‘conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the 
Virgin Mary,’ an interpretation that harmonized with my knowl- 
edge of the facts. He was a Child of the holy seed, sanctified 
from His mother’s womb. A Son of God all the more, in my esti- 
mation, because He was the Son of Man. ‘Then I saw for the 
first time into the meaning of those words of John when he said, 
“The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld 
His glory as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father full of 
grace and truth,’ and I could understand how in the same chapter 
Philip could say of this incarnate Word, ‘We have found Him of 
whom Moses in the Law and the prophets did write, Jesus of 
‘Nazareth, the Son of Joseph.’ 

“Now this conception of Jesus based upon a careful study of Holy 
Scriptures is of the very warp and woof of my intellectual and spir- 
itual life, and it is not probable that it will ever change. I will 
carry it with me into that spiritual world where I shall see Jesus 
face to face. But I am told by judicial decision that this concep- 
tion is not permissible in the mind of a minister of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. I bow to that decision. I cannot change my 
mind—I therefore leave the Church. I do not blame my judges; 
they acted according to their light—let not them blame me if I 


278 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


follow my light, which is lightening me to the everlasting day. But 
whether they blame or not, I cannot do other than I do—I must 
obey God rather than men. 

“But while I thus feel that their decision is final for me, I am 
equally certain that it is not final for the Church. I have reason 
to know that there are hundreds of clergymen and thousands of lay- 
men in the Protestant Episcopal Church who have reached the same 
conclusion that I have, and, Sir, I beg to say to them in this letter 
to you, that their position in the Church is just as tenable as it 
ever was. ‘This judgment affects no person except myself. Let no 
one be dismayed. Let every man stand in his place—speak his mind 
boldly, and the truth will soon have such a multitude of witnesses 
that all in the Church must hear. So confident am I of the truth 
as it is in Jesus that I appeal from those in places of authority in the 
Church to the Church itself, to the great body of the people, secure 
in their wise, sane, serene possession of the truth. Again I exhort 
my brethren of like belief to stay where they are. I am about to 
carry our case to the high Court of the free intelligence and the 
enlightened conscience of the world, and if I win it there, I will 
win it for every Church and every soul in Christendom. If I fail 
before that Court, it will be because I am wrong in my conception 
of truth; and then I will be glad to fail, for my contention is not 
for my conception, but for the eternal truth of God. Let my breth- 
ren within the Church abide the issue of this trial. For when the 
Great Tribunal of Free Thought has decided this contention, the 
men who administer the Church on earth will conform to this de- 
cision. It is to this work of showing that God is in Man and Man 
is in God that I consecrate the rest of my life. 

“In asking my dismissal from the Church of my life-long devo- 
tion, I do so with the deepest gratitude for the opportunities of wor- 
ship, of preaching and of service which have been the privileges of 
my office. To pray before the altar of my church has been my daily 
habit. ‘To preach the gospel of Jesus from the pulpit of my church 
has been my weekly delight. But far dearer to my soul than all 
ministry within the walls of the church has been the oppor- 
tunity that has come to me as the glorious privilege of my pastoral 
office of being of daily service to my people in all the changes and 
chances of their mortal lives. If I seem to have unduly contended 


RENUNCIATION 2°79 


for my ministry, let my pardon be that I value my ministry above 
everything except my integrity and deemed it due to others as well 
as myself and above all to the Church itself to have an authoritative 
and deliberate decision. 

“Tt is to me more than meat and drink to have the right to be 
with my people in every critical hour of their lives, to give them in 
the name of the living God courage to live and courage to die. My 
conviction that we need no miracle to account for Jesus of Nazareth 
is confirmed by my daily contact with the lives of the people. In 
these men and women of my charge who go forth to their work 
and to their labour until the evening, who bear the world’s burden 
without receiving the world’s reward, many of whom endure suf- 
ferings unspeakable and privations that are often appalling, who 
with all their faults, are yet heroic in their patience, whose daily 
toil is the support of the world; in these men and women, I say, 
I see not the cursed seed of any Adam, but the blood brothers and 
sisters of Jesus of Nazareth. To leave this daily ministry to such a 
people is to break my heart. But better a broken heart than a life 
made false and loathsome by cowardly retraction. 

“In leaving the organized Church, so far as its ministry is con- 
cerned, I feel that I can take with me the best that the Church has 
given me; the fasts and the feasts, the vigils and the tears of the 
Church have become mine by right of possession, and not all the 
courts and Bishops of the Church could take them away. I shall 
watch in Advent, be merry at Christmas, fast in Lent, weep on 
Good Friday, rejoice at Easter, even though the Church’s servants 
shut its doors upon me. Yes, all the more because they have shut 
its doors upon me, driven from the earthly tabernacle, I shall have 
to take refuge in that tabernacle not made with hands, which is the 
tabernacle where God dwells with all His saints and angels. 

“And if I seem to have lost my hold upon some of the traditional 
and physical interpretations of the creed, let it not be thought on 
that account that I have lost my hold on the Gospel of Christ. 
Nay, rather because I have let go these temporary and unstable in- 
terpretations of the creed, I find strength to hold more firmly than 
ever to the gospel. [I believe as never before that to love the Lord 
my God with all my soul and all my mind and all my strength, and 
to love my neighbour as myself, is not only more than the law and 


280 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


the prophets, but is also more than the creeds and the Churches. 
I see more clearly than ever that the five negative laws of righteous- 
ness laid down by Jesus, which laws command us not to be angry, 
not to lust, not to take any oath or vow, not to resist evil, not to 
hate the stranger though he be an enemy, I see, I say, more clearly 
than ever that these laws are the hedges of that straight and narrow 
way that leadeth unto life. To walk in that way has been and will 
be the constant labour of my soul. 

“Let no one think for a moment that I do not love the Lord Jesus 
Christ and would not have served him to the last in this Church, 
which is to me the historic Church of the great English-speaking 
race, if only its men in authority had let me. All I asked of them 
was tolerance. But they have refused to extend tolerance to such 
as I, and I must, with a grief which only my own heart knows, ac- 
cept my dismissal from the service of the Church. But though cast 
down, I do not despair. As I have been true to God, so I believe 
God will be true to me. I believe He has work for me to do and 
that is His way of calling me to that work. In His Name, there- 
fore, Right Reverend Sir, I beseech you to forgive me my offences 
and let me go. 

“Assuring you that I go without the slightest animosity to any 
that I leave behind, and with love unspeakable to that host of men 
and women within the Church who have comforted me in my tribu- 
lation and, most of all, with a gratitude that will never die to four 
men who have done for me what men can seldom do for another— 
to Seth Low and George Foster Peabody, to James Breck Perkins 
and Edward Morse Shepard—to these men I leave my undying 
gratitude, and with contrition to the Church for all the faults and 
failings of my ministry, I remain, Right Reverend and dear sir, 

“Your servant in the Lord Jesus Christ, 
““ALGERNON 9S. CRAPSEY. 


“Rr, Rey. WittiAm Davin Watxer, S.T.D., 
“Bishop of Western New York.” 


My letter was mailed to the bishop and given to the 
press on Saturday afternoon; it was sent out by the Asso- 
ciated Press and the United Press in full to every paper 
in the United States and Canada. It was cabled to Eng- 


RENUNCIATION 281 


land, and on Sunday morning it had millions of readers. 
Its reaction was hundreds of letters of commendation from 
all parts of the country, of which I give the following: 


“HARVARD UNIVERSITY, 
““CAMBRIDGE, Mass. 
“Nov. 28, 1906. 
“My pEAR Dr. Crapsey: 

“YT had the honour of meeting you at Hampton some years ago 
with our mutual and dear friend George Foster Peabody, and this 
passing acquaintance may, I hope, justify me in expressing to you 
the profound appreciation with which I have just read your letter 
to your Bishop. I have not been able to concur with you or witn 
Mr. Peabody, with whom I have talked on the subject, concerning 
the adaptation and flexibility of the historic creeds. My own train- 
ing in another way of thought makes me perhaps incapable of sym- 
pathy with this process of spiritual adjustment. Now, however, 
that the ecclesiastical question is determined, I cannot deny myself 
the satisfaction of expressing my sense of your candour, straightfor- 
wardness and Christian charity. ‘There are, of course, many per- 
sons who will feel that the interpretation of a creed is of the essen- 
tials of Christian faith, but there is an enormously greater number 
of American citizens who regard this question as entirely subordi- 
nate to the problems of Christian character and Christian purpose; 
and who will find in your honest mind and unswerving discipleship 
a better testimony to the nature of the Christian religion than any 
ecclesiastical Court can make. I congratulate you on the tranquil 
bearing of your own burden, and on the privilege which is given to 
you, through the bearing of others’ burdens, to fulfil the law of 
Christ. 

“Respectfully yours, 
“Francis G. Prazopy.” 


“THE RECTORY 
‘““ANDOVER, MaAss. 
“My prar Dr, Crapsey: 
“T cannot refrain from presuming on the acquaintance which I 
made with you one evening at the Trinity Club in Boston, to ex- 


282 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


press to you the great interest and deep admiration I felt in reading 
your noble Letter of Resignation. 

“While I greatly regret the result of the trial, unwise, as it seems 
to me, unjust, and without warrant by the Standards of our Church, 
I cannot but think it will be for the Church’s benefit. ‘The views 
you have been condemned for holding would in any case have be- 
come the rightful property of the Church in half a century. But 
you have hastened the time, so that in half a dozen years such 
opinions will be recognized as legitimate, as fully as the modern 
views of the first chapters of Genesis now are. And one may al- 
most envy you the opportunity of pouring out blood for that. 

“Yet the dominance of any opinions is, it seems to me, the less 
important result of this trial. It is of far more importance that 
the community has had exhibited to it that Christian Spirit which 
has characterized you through all the proceedings, and which espe- 
cially shines forth so nobly in your Letter. ‘To have embodied the 
spirit of Christ so that men recognize with certainty and joy its 
authenticity, is not only preaching Christ to men but renewing for 
them His Incarnation. And what could a Christian minister de- 
sire more! 

“The sufferer must often bitterly ask, ‘What profit is there in my 
blood if I go down into the pit?’ Let me assure you that some of 
us can discern already in this hard sorrow which has come to you, 
great profit not only to the intellectual life of all branches of the 
Christian Church, but to the world through the revelation to it of 
the spirit of Christ; especially its extension into that field where it 
is too often grievously lacking—theological discussion of polemics. 

“With great respect, I am, 

“Sincerely yours, 
“FREDERICK PALMER, 
“ANDOVER, Mass., 
“Dec. 5, 1900.” 


“No. 29 BUCKINGHAM STREET, 
“CAMBRIDGE 
“Dec. 5, 1906. 
“DeEAR Dr. Crapsey: 
‘Allow an old Transcendentalist of the Emerson School to thank 


RENUNCIATION 283 


you from his heart for your Letter of Renunciaton. ‘Almost thou 
persuadest me’ to be a Churchman. 
“Most Cordially, 
“THomMAS WENTWORTH HIccINSON.” 


CHAPTER XLIX 


ABIIT AD PLURES 


s the reader will remark, I had requested the 
A bishop to accomplish my deposition not earlier 
than the third nor later than the sixth of Decem- 

ber of that year—1906. ‘The reason for this limitation 
was that I might have a Sunday in which to preach to my 
people for the last time and to give them my final blessing 
from the altar. The story of that day has been told bet- 
ter than I can tell it in a letter from one of my parishioners 
to a friend in the village of Catskill. The Catskill Ex- 


aminer published that letter with comments as follows: 


“The formal deposition of the Rev. Algernon S. Crapsey, of 
Rochester, from the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church, 
was pronounced by Bishop Walker, of the diocese of Western New 
York, at Buffalo on Tuesday. Dr. Crapsey held his final service in 
St. Andrew’s Church, Rochester, on Sunday morning, that edifice 
being filled to the doors by a congregation that was plainly in sym- 
pathy with the clergyman and much affected by the necessity of 
parting from him. In his sermon Dr. Crapsey made no reference 
to the close of his ministry, as he had made a farewell address to his 
parishioners on the previous Wednesday evening. A member of 
St. Andrew’s Church wrote to a friend in this village: 

“*T want to tell you about yesterday at St. Andrews. It was a 
“oreat” day and yet one of the saddest days in the history of Roches- 
ter and the church. A noble man and the father of many spiritual 
children was turned out of his home and his children are left sor- 
rowing. The services began with the Holy Communion at 7:30 
in the morning, and the church was filled with St. Andrew’s com- 
municants tc receive the last sacrament from their loved pastor’s 

284 


ABIIT AD PLURES 285 


hands. We have never had so large a number out for an early 
Easter communion. As the people came back from the altar their 
faces were stained with tears, even the children. It must have been 
a trying ordeal for Dr. Crapsey and I was afraid he wouldn’t be 
able to speak aloud at the 11 o’clock service, as he had no one to 
help him in the service. At 11 o’clock the church was simply 
packed; men and women stood during the whole time. Some even 
sat on the steps of altar, in the transept and close up to the 
pulpit and reading-desk, besides the crowd in the chapel. I be- 
lieve many were turned away who couldn’t get in at all. There 
was an unusual number of men in the church, rich and poor,. high 
and low, all seemed anxious to show their sympathy and love for 
the rector. 

““At the beginning of the hymn “Blest be the tie that binds,” 
there was deep emotion shown and people could not sing for weep- 
ing. Then the sermon followed, which was very strong and in- 
spiring. I am sure we all felt that what was true of Jesus was true 
of Dr. Crapsey; he certainly is following in the footsteps of the 
Master, and his persecutors ‘know not what they do.” Dr. Crap- 
sey looked worn and as if he were endeavouring to suppress his 
emotion, but spoke in a strong, impressive way. “The crowd was 
so silent and attentive you could almost hear the silence. ‘The col- 
lection had been taken before the sermon, so immediately after Dr. 
Crapsey had stopped speaking the choir formed and he walked out 
of the church, down the middle aisle in deathlike stillness (there 
was no music), broken by the sobs of the people to whom he has 
ministered so long and faithfully. It was heart-rending to us all. 
Everything was done so quietly and without any dramatic effect, 
but the deep and real sorrow was so evident. It is too soon to tell 
what the future of the church will be, but I feel sure that Dr. 
Crapsey’s work for the cause of freedom is just begun, and that 
he and his brave wife will have the strength they need. On 
Thanksgiving Day also the church was crowded and Dr. Crapsey 
gave us a beautiful sermon on “Joy.” The evening before 
(Wednesday) was held the meeting of the parish. Every seat was 
filled and the rector spoke his farewell to his people. In some re- 
spects that was the most solemn time of all. I suppose you have 
read his very touching words to us.’ ” 


286 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


On Tuesday, the fifth of December, 1906, I was 
formally deposed from the ministry of the Episcopal 
Church by Bishop Walker, in St. John’s Chapel, Buffalo. 
I was not present at that ceremony, nor did I receive any 
written notice of it. 

When a Roman died, the Latins said of him Abiit ad 
plures—he has gone over to the majority; so it was with 
me; the day I ceased to be a minister, I became one of the 
people, freed from all restraining vows; I was at liberty 
to speak my mind without fear or favour. I ceased to be 
a priest and became a prophet. 

By the courtesy of the vestry of Saint Andrew’s Church, 
we were allowed to remain in the rectory until we 
could find a home elsewhere. We decided not to leave 
Rochester. We had in that city a following and an in- 
fluence, the consequence of our more than a quarter of a 
century of work, which would be lost to us if we went else- 
where. In due time, we rented a house near the Univer- 
sity and removed to it. This removal was the most tragic 
of all the tragic events in the disruption of our official 
relations to the Church. Our rectory had been our home 
for twenty-seven years; in it six of our children had been 
born and two of them had died; it was thus sanctified to 
us by our joys and our sorrows. My wife had made it a 
centre of ministration to the people. She planted its door- 
yard with trees and shrubs and bordered its walk with 
flowers. It was her home and she could never hope for 
another like it; thus realizing the adage, “The woman 


pays.” 


CHAPTER L 
THE BISHOP ERRS 


N the early stages of the heresy agitation, Bishop 

Walker went to Saint Andrew’s rectory to serve a 

legal paper upon the rector. The rector not being 
at home, the bishop asked the rector’s wife to take this 
paper from his hand and serve it upon her husband. ‘This 
the rector’s wife, naturally, declined to do; she had no 
desire to become, even for an hour, an officer of the Ec- 
clesiastical Court which was to try her husband upon the 
charge of violating his ordination vows. The bishop dur- 
ing the interview expressed his profound sorrow that, be- 
cause of her husband’s heresy, his wife and her children 
were to lose their home, to live as best they might, with 
no certain means of support. ‘This sorrow of the bishop 
reminded me, grimly, of the sorrow of D’Ailly and the 
clergy at the Council of Constance, who, after the trial 
and condemnation of John Huss, delivered him sorrow- 
fully into the power of the Emperor Sigismund to be 
burned at the stake. 

That the bishop’s grief was well founded cannot be 
denied. There is no more pitiable object in the world 
than an unfrocked priest. If he be a Catholic priest, 
without force or genius, he is condemned to a life of pov- 
erty and loneliness; if he be an Anglican priest or a Prot- 
estant minister and is a married man, his is the sadder 
fate; he does not suffer alone; those who are dearer to 
him than life suffer with him; indeed, his wife and chil- 


dren are the greater sufferers; he has the glory of his 
287 


288 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


martyrdom; they suffer in silence and obscurity the conse- 
quences of that martyrdom. Such a dismissed clergyman 
is as helpless in the world as a new-born babe; he has been 
trained to give and not to get and is the easy prey of the 
getting world. Bishop Walker was in the right when he 
warned the wife of the rector of Saint Andrews of her 
coming sorrow; it came with the loss of her home and the 
loss of her work and while she has had another home and 
other work, yet that does not do away with the pain and 
grief of parting with loving friends and familiar scenes, 
which was the consequence of the husband’s and the 
father’s heresy. 

But while we did suffer the penalty of banishment from 
the Church of our livelong devotion and were shut out 
from the worship which was the habit of our souls, we 
did not sink down into that slough of poverty which the 
bishop foresaw as our fate. ‘The bishop erred because 
he did not reckon with the new age nor with the great 
heart of William Rossiter Seward, who by his kindly ac- 
tion put to naught the gloomy prognostications of William 
David Walker. 

‘There was no reason in the world why William Rossiter 
Seward should have delivered me and my family from un- 
der the power of the curse of the bishop. I had not the 
slightest claim upon him. When he first came to my res- 
cue he was not a member of my church, nor even my per- 
sonal friend. I knew of him, but did not know him. 
This miracle of kindness by which our lives were made 
intimate, was the outcome of my deliverer’s history and 
character. 

Mr. Seward was attracted by the preaching of the rec- 
tor of Saint Andrew’s Church and expressed his approval, 
as he always does, in a very practical way. When one of 
my birthdays came around, Mr. Seward sent me a check 
for a liberal sum, saying it was a thank-offering for the 


THE BISHOP ERRS 289 
fact of my birth. When the bishop and the standing com- 
mittee turned me and my family out of our rectory on to 
the street, Mr. Seward made haste to plan a house for us 
to live in. ‘This house was completed in January, 1908, 
and we removed to it on the ninth day of that month, 
having lived meanwhile in our own hired house. 

This house, with its beautiful garden, has been our 
home for more than sixteen years. We live here as the 
guests of Mr. William Rossiter Seward. We are in what 
was once his cornfield. We are now in the heart of a city 
with all the advantages of the country. Mr. Seward, in 
his ninety-first year, is still our neighbour and our friend. 
Now, the reader can understand why we said the bishop 
erred when he declared that we would be on the street 
with no roof to cover us. We are on the same street with 
our former church; we have a roof over our heads and a 
house of surpassing loveliness. The bishop erred because 
he did not know the God of light and love, who dwelt in 
the heart of William Seward and made him pitiful to give 
shelter to the outcast priest with his wife and his children. 

This house has served both as a residence and a parish 
house: It was built with a view to such uses. For more 
than eight years after my deposition from the ministry of 
the Episcopal Church, I continued to exercise my functions 
as preacher and pastor, speaking every Sunday night in one 
of the theatres of the city, either in person or by repre- 
sentative: My pastoral work did not decrease; it increased 
after my expulsion from the Church—in all of these enter- 
prises I was sustained by a band of men and women or- 
ganied as a Brotherhood. 

My wife continued her Sewing-Guild in the Brotherhood 
House until her work evolved into a commercial enterprise 
now employing more than fifty women, together with an of- 
fice staff, which enterprise is now serving the whole coun- 
try. The workers in this establishment call themselves 


290 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 
“The Factory Family”; of this ‘‘family,” Mrs. Crapsey is 
the mother; the workers are her children; the spirit of the 
Church and the Brotherhood pervades the factory. 

This commercial Establishment is known to the trade as 


The Adelaide T. Crapsey Co. Inc. 


CHAPTER LI 


THE DIVINITY OF A TELEGRAPH POLE 


‘ ) y HEN God appointed Adam to the task of nam- 
ing the various animals of the earth, He as- 
signed him to a useful and necessary work. 
Without names it would be difficult, if not impossible, to 
carry forward human life. Not only must men have per- 
sonal names, but the different functions of their life must 
be classified and labelled. It is more than a matter of 
convenience that men belong to political parties, to 
Churches and denominations. If a man is to make his 
way easily through life he must politically be a member of 
his party, be a Democrat or a Republican; in religion he 
must belong to his Church or his denomination, be a 
Catholic or a Protestant, an Episcopalian or a Methodist. 
To be labelled in this way saves a man a vast deal of trou- 
ble; he need not explain his politics or define his religion; 
he has but to say, “I am a Republican and a Presbyterian,” 
and go his way. No further questions are asked; he need 
not go behind the name to the thing. 

Unfortunately for me, my religious tag was consumed 
in the fires of my heresy trial. Now when men ask me 
what my religion is, I find it dificult to answer their inquiry 
in a single word or phrase. I am as badly off as a name- 
less man. I cannot do business in the religious world. 
Apparently, I am nothing and belong nowhere. One who 
has not experienced this isolation can have no notion of 
what it means. It is well called excommunication. Such 


a forlorn person can no longer communicate with his fel- 
291 


292 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


lows; he walks alone; he must think for himself and talk 
to himself; his religion is an inchoate nameless thing; he 
cannot explain it to others; he can hardly define it to him- 
self. When I am asked in these days what my religion is, 
I hesitate and stumble, and men go away thinking that I 
have no religion. 

But I have a religion and if asked to give it a name I 
should say I am a Pantheistic Humanist, and if one were 
to ask, ‘‘What is a Pantheistic Humanist?” I should say 
one who believes in the divinity of a telegraph pole. I am 
indebted for this definition of my religious belief to the 
Reverend John Mills Gilbert, the youngest of my judges 
in my heresy trial. My reader will recall that when my 
judges were debating my case Mr. Dunham, the eldest of 
my judges, said that ‘“‘While Dr. Crapsey may not believe 
in the deity of Christ, he evidently does believe in the 
divinity of Christ.” At this young Gilbert, pointing 
through the window, said, ‘“There is no more divinity in 
Crapsey’s Christ than there is in that telegraph pole.” I 
have always been grateful to Judge Gilbert for this re- 
mark; it gave me the clue to the discovery of my religion 
of Pantheistic Humanism. 

Ever after that as I walked along the highways I 
used to study the telegraph poles; their gaunt, naked, 
weather-stained forms haunted my soul. What were 
they? Whence came they? What were they doing? 
As I looked at them I saw that they were the trunks of 
trees stripped of their branches; they were weather- 
scarred and there was no beauty in them that we should 
desire them; lifting their nakedness toward the sky, they 
were a blemish on the landscape. As one saw them one 
could not but pity them; each one of them standing alone, 
in summer’s heat and winter’s cold, no longer feeling the 
flow of the sap in the springtime, nor the breaking-out of 


THE DIVINITY OF A TELEGRAPH POLE 293 
the leaves in the month of May. Nothing divine there, 
only hopeless desolation and endless death. 

Whence came they? Each of them came from the for- 
est which was their home where it had lived out its won- 
derful life history. Its beginning was a seed, which a 
man could hold between his forefinger and thumb; that 
seed had fallen to the ground and the earth had: covered 
it. By its own inherent power the life of that seed had 
thrust itself upward into the air; it had taken from the 
air the elements of its growth. Year after year it had in- 
creased in substance and in power, sending its roots deeper 
and deeper into the earth and its branches higher and 
wider into the air; the birds made their nests in its 
branches; the cattle rested in its shadow from the noonday 
heat and its fruitage furnished forth the tables of men. 
When it was in all the fullness and joy of its life, the 
woodmen came and cut it down and made of it a telegraph 
pole. 

What is a telegraph pole? It is this tree of the forest, 
cut from its roots, stripped of its branches, planted firmly 
in the ground, with outstretched arms nailed to its trunk, 
and on these arms are placed the wires that carry mes- 
sages of joy and sorrow, of gain and loss, from man to 
man all round the world. 

When I thought on these things I said if my Christ has 
in Him the divinity of a telegraph pole, then He is divine 
enough for me, and if I can share in that divinity I am 
content. Is not the telegraph pole the aptest symbol of 
my Master? Did He not begin as a human seed, invisible 
to the eye of man? Did not that seed bury itself deep in 
the substance of humanity? Did it not by its own inherent 
strength break out from its hiding-place into the light and 
air of the earth? Did it not take of that light and air 
and change it into the flesh and blood and wisdom of a 


294. THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


man? Did not that man become a man among men, with 
His relationships of son and brother, of friend and enemy? 
Did He not go out among His fellows speaking to them 
words of wisdom and comforting them in their sorrows? 
And when He was in the prime and glory of His manhood, 
was He not cut down by the ax of hate, stripped down to 
His nakedness and made, as it were, into a telegraph pole 
with outstretched arms to send out His messages of warn- 
ing and encouragement, of love and peace, all around the 
world? And to this day is not the Cross the symbol of 
salvation to mankind? 

Now, my reader will say these are the words of a 
preacher; they are well enough in the pulpit, but they mean 
nothing in the street and the market-place; which is true. 
It was because these words, which I had heard in the se- 
cret chamber of the Mansion of Life, did mean something 
to me that there was a conflict between my pulpit and the 
forces of the street and the market-place, and these forces 
of the street and the market-place prevailed and drove me 
out of my pulpit. I was accused of denying the divinity 
of Christ because I asserted the humanity of Jesus, and I 
still assert that it is in the humanity of Jesus that we find 
the divinity of the Christ. The street and the market- 
place think that they can beguile the Christ into the sav- 
ing of their souls by building for Him grandiose churches, 
by hiring men and women and boys to sing His praises and 
by calling Him Lord and God; thus will they hoodwink 
the Christ while they are busy buying, selling and getting 
gain, scanting the wages of the widow. ‘They may be able 
to fool the Christ, for the Christ is the creation of the 
theologians, but they will never be able to deceive Jesus, 
for He was a workingman, a carpenter and a mason, and 
knows the ways of the business world. 

To speak in simple language, I am a heretic because I 


THE DIVINITY OF A TELEGRAPH POLE 295 


believe in the teaching of Jesus and do not believe in the 
doctrine of the Christ. I have long since lost all desire 
for the salvation by the blood of Christ, which the Church 
holds out to me. I do not want to be only a message; I 
want to be a pole that carries the message. Paul says 
that if in this life only we have hope, we are of all men 
most miserable. I do not think so; if I in this life can 
serve the purposes of the greater life, I am content. I 
have no desire for a heaven of robe and crown and harp 
and wine and song celebrating things accomplished. I do 
not know how it may be with others, but, as for me, I feel 
that I have had my full portion at the table of life. Every 
day for me the sun has come up and the sun has gone 
down. Every night for me the stars have come out into 
the sky and the moon in her seasons has silvered the earth. 
For me the snows have covered the ground in the winter 
to keep it warm and the frost has prepared ice for me 
against the time of heat. For me the clouds have come 
with their cleansing waters and the winds with their cool- 
ing breath. Birds have nested in my garden and made my 
home vocal with their music. For me the flowers have 
bloomed, the trees fruited and the grapes have been pur- 
ple in the cluster. I have known a father’s companion- 
ship and a mother’s love. I have grown up in the com- 
pany of brothers and sisters; I have been enriched by the 
affection of wife and children; I have had friends who 
have loved me beyond my deserving and enemies whom 
I have learned to love. I have been the heir of the ages. 
The wisdom of the wise has been mine and the song of 
the poet; my vision has been enlightened by the genius of 
the artist and my hearing attuned by the skill of the mu- 
sician. It has been my lot to encourage the living and to 
comfort the dying. I have known the inspiration of joy 
and the discipline of sorrow. 


i= a 


WR 


296 THE LAST OF THE HERETICS 


And besides all this, for nearly fourscore years it has 
been my high privilege to stand at the wayside of Life 
and see the Gods go by. 

It is enough. , 

And now am I come to the uttermost marge of the 
shores of time: Standing on its sands, looking out over 
the ocean of Eternity, the waters of which are cold on my 
feet, | am watching the Sun go down; I am content. 

If, however, there is toil and care for me in the Great 
Beyond, I do not wish to shirk it. 


“Have I my work, out yonder 
Where silence reigns supreme; 
Have I my task, I wonder, 
To pull against the stream? 


“Am I to do God’s thinking, 
With Him to work and plan; 
From toil nor sorrow shrinking 
As we build the soul of man? 


“Ts my task in His vineyard 
To dig and plant and prune; 
To weigh upon His steelyard 
His grapes in heat of noon? 


“Am I to fetch and carry 
To workmen on His wall; 

And will the task I marry 
My energy enthrall? 


“Is there a God, out yonder, 
Sore troubled and beset; 

In waters doth He flounder, 

Is He faint, cold and wet? 


THE DIVINITY OF A TELEGRAPH POLE 


“Doth He cry to me for aid 
Across the seas of doubt; 
Must I Death’s waters wade, 

That I may help Him out? 


“Is there a God who needs me? 
Then let Him tell me so, 
When from this flesh Death frees me, 


I’m His for weal and woe. 


“I care not for His heaven, 
I do not fear His hell; 
But if to me is given 
His work, then all is well.” 


SELAH 


297 


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